Stable Confusion - Worlds Only x Junior Major
Soft Centre, White Bay Powerstation - Wangal & Gadigal Country (Sydney) - 2025
From Junior Major:
A live performance between Worlds Only and Junior Major. As the band plays, AI visuals react in real time to sound and spoken word, while Junior Major edits the code live to try and reverse what the AI has learned to do.
The aim is to trick what the system hears and sees, twisting sound and language into the unexpected. A live contest between human instinct and machine logic, where no two moments are ever the same.
Technology
Built in TouchDesigner, the performance runs across two networked PCs. Vocal feeds are split through a custom JFET pedal and processed with Whisper AI for live transcription. Video content passes through Stable Diffusion, layered with generative effects controlled by MIDI.
The result is a real-time dialogue between sound, data and image, a system that learns, listens and responds in the moment.
Credits
Arantxa Uria, Art Direction
Claire Evans, Business Director
Evan Davies, Technical Lead (Hardware)
Jarrod Lambert, Technical Coordinator
Jordan East, Touch Designer Developer
René Christen, Technical Lead (Software)
Shunji Davies, Project Director
Sophie Penkethman-Young, Producer
Tom Siddall, Creative Director
Worlds Only, Music
From me:
This project was a fun undertaking, trying to strike the balance between noise, recognisable imagery and AI hallucinations.
As TouchDesigner developer, I created an ‘instrument’ that could be played alongside the 6 improvisational musicians of Worlds Only. The instrument has a multiple inputs, including live audio from the band, live voice transcription through Jarrod’s custom JFET pedal and Whisper AI, nostalgic videos provided by the band, and the diffusion model (StreamDiffusion by Dotsimulate) hallucination of these images and voice prompts. Using a midi controller, I manipulate all of these inputs within the ‘grid’. which represents the ‘clarity’ in which the AI systems are interpreting the audio and text signals. I control the dynamics of these parameters live in response to the music being created by Worlds Only.
