Abo Abo (Forum Studio Session #2) received Ars Electronica 2025 Price

  • Published on 07/11/2025 by laenen

Artist Abo Abo received an honourable mention in the Prix Ars Electronica 2025 for his performance New Ruins, commissioned by the Forum as part of the Forum Studio event.

Schedule by the Forum IRCAM within the framework of the event Forum Studio, the artist Abo Abo's performance New Ruins has been awarded an honourable mention in the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica 2025 (Digital Musics & Sound Art category).

New Ruins explores the intersection of music, technology and artificial intelligence using two Ircam technologies: RAVE, developed by the ACIDS team, and Somax2, created by the ERC REACH Team. This performance took place as part of the Forum Studio event on 21 January, broadcast live from IRCAM's Studio 5.

RAVE (Realtime Audio Variational autoEncoder) is a deep learning framework for audio synthesis, which enables high-quality sounds to be generated rapidly by training neural network models on audio data.

Somax2 is an AI-powered musical improvisation tool that integrates automatic listening, cognitive memory and a multi-agent architecture for real-time control and composition.

The performance establishes a relationship between turntables, modular synthesizers and AI-driven tools, creating a complex and coherent system. The audio experience is enhanced by a video component managed by performer and visual artist Tania Cortés Becerra, whose work creates an audio-reactive connection between sound and image, enriching the overall performance.