This concert by David Link, FM Einheit and Jamie Lidell was recorded live at the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival in November 2004, and has just been released on FM 4.5.1.

:: The Project ::
ECHOHCE is a project for a singer and a machine generating text. The singer speaks the title of a song to be generated into a microphone. A speech recognition software translates the words into text and sends it to the Poetry Machine. The software answers by generating a stream of associations that are related to the topic. They are displayed to the singer as they evolve. He selects the lyrics that seem meaningful to him and performs them. Eventually, words in his performance trigger new association processes that again feed back to the singer. The singer and the machine form a poetic, generative feedback loop. The speech output of Poetry Machine might contribute to the musical environment. Rhyming and rhythm are to be discussed. The musical background has to be open enough to deal with the unexpectedness that is an essential part of this project. On this release, it turns out to be quite accessible and open.

:: The Poetry Machine ::
David Link´s text generator Poetry Machine is based on semantic networks. The program only contains routines to process text, no hardcoded datasets. It digests documents of human authors and extracts their associative interconnections. Its main source of information are the masses of text in the internet. Poetry Machine is part of the permanent collection of the Centre for Art and Mediatechnology (ZKM), Karlsruhe.

:: Credits ::
FM EINHEIT - various instruments
JAMIE LIDELL - vocals
DAVID LINK - text & voice generators
SASKIA v. KLITZING - drums
VOLKER KAMP - bass
Conception and production: David Link
Composition: FM Einheit

(source: Press Release)