angels prey over sparse architectures
for doubly-amplified bass flute, 2 amplified keyboard players and sound-processing controller
2025 - 10’
premiered by NAMES — Limina Contemporary Music Festival, Salzburg, 27 November 2025
The work’s main inspirations stem from the research and artworks of Alex Quicho, Noura Tafeche and Zein Majali. Their analyses dissect the intersection between internet cultures and genocide. The title owes a concrete debt to two sources: Bogna Konior’s lecture ‘Angels in Latent Spaces’ which examines Artifical Intelligence erotics and Afra Wang’s interview with an Artificial General Intelligence engineer in China. Wang’s interviewee argues that AGI can not supersede humans as it does not posses the ‘sparse architecture’ of our brain function. The title is also hugely inspired by Tafeche and Quicho’s (especially) discussions of the drone—an all-seeing weapon hovering over civilians before committing a barbaric act of violence—and the distance inherent in drone warfare: a drone operator can shoot a nurse in the head through a hospital window without actually being in the area. Quicho and Tafeche look at how fifth-generation warfare is being staged, not one of combat but of suggestion. It is warfare fought in the bedroom, warfare of artificiality and propaganda during a genocide. The gamer’s chair is that of the drone operator, the e-girl’s TikTok dances those of the soldier.