BLA BLAVATAR vs JAAP BLONK – an experimental collaboration between artist Jonathan Reus and sound poet Jaap Blonk exploring voice dataset making and voice improvisation – focusing on situational absurdity, improvisation and bespoke scoring systems. In an uncanny duet, Reus and Blonk call and respond to one another in dynamic crescendos. Blonk’s real voice plays against, with, within, and without a computer model of his own voice. The model, a bespoke real-time performance system called Tungnaaá developed and performed by Reus, far a from perfectly-immitative AI avatar, seems to creatively misbehave as it collapses transients and fragments of vocalization into relentless sound forms.

Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk emphasizes liveness, and takes iterative growth as the basis for an autoregressive musical cycle, with reminants of all previous performances carrying forward into the next. The dataset grows, the next model is different, the next score is generated – a process of organic development in a perpetually unfinished vocal performance. The collaboration between Reus and Blonk more broadly explores one possibility for how dataset creation can be a deeply musical and social act – a way for two artists to connect through the interlocutor of voice data creation. Alongside the sonic aesthetics: vocal fragmentation, collapse and relentless generation, the broader performance cycle focuses on the creative relationship between Jaap Blonk and Jonathan Reus, this work emphasizes trust, mentorship, and shared artistic values.

For this collaboration, Reus worked within the infrastructure of the Intelligent Instruments Lab (IIL) in Iceland, and collaborated with the sound art lab PiNA in Koper as part of the EU S+T+ARTS AIR residency framework. In a close partnership with Victor Shepardson of the IIL, they created Tungnaá, an intentionally open, accessible and hackable real-time AI voice instrument. Like the performance cycle itself, Tungnaá is open and incomplete, the software grows and changes together with the performers and the direction of their musical collaboration – accepting unfinishedness as a desirable quality for musical tools and practices.

The performance was initially inspired as a absurd take on generative AI avatars and the goldrush to capitalise on creative automation. Rather than focusing on the uncanny realism of voice clones, the performance foregrounds the physical, creative and mental effort of performing sound poetry precisely according to an AI-friendly score, and being obnoxiously interrupted. As part of the process, Reus and Blonk have invented a number of new sound poetry notation systems meant to be both human and machine readable, carefully balancing ideas of vocal expression and representation with machinic listening. These scores, built up from the full scope of the unicode standard of graphic symbols, is inspired by artistic traditions of typographical scores, alternative vocal notations, as well as the traditions of phonetically balanced reading scripts in speech research.

During the performance all of Blonk’s vocalisations are recorded and added to a growing dataset, which is used to improve the model for the next performance.

Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk won Award of Distinction for Digital Music and Sound Arts at Prix Ars Electronica 2025.

A statement issued by the awards jury of the 2025 Prix Ars Electronica awards called the work “an exemplary demonstration of the symbiosis between artistic practice and technological development” where “artists’ perspectives were deeply involved … throughout the entire AI pipeline”. They additionally praised the work for showcasing “how AI technologies can open entirely new artistic possibilities, serving as a tool for extension rather than substitution”, and “how artists can actively and creatively influence the development of AI, not only by using the technology but also by contributing fundamentally to its design and purpose.”

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Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk is one outcome of the 2023-24 S+T+ARTS AIR residency Dadasets, which uses interdisciplinary arts-led research to reveal the invisible labor of dataset creation and AI training through the perspective of human voices. This performance premiered at IZIS Festival, an annual event and exhibition organised by PiNA, and one of Slovenia’s premier cultural events presenting international forward-thinking new media art and audio/visual performances. This 12th edition of the festival was curated by Irena Borić with the theme JUST CONTROL.

Made possible with support from:

PiNA – Association for Culture and Education

Intelligent Instruments Lab, University of Iceland

Stroom Den Haag

S+T+ARTS AIR, “Making the Invisible Visible”, is funded by European Union call CNECT/2022/3482066 – Art and the digital: Unleashing creativity for European industry, regions, and society under grant agreement LC-01984767. It is part of the S+T+ARTS programme.