Ex Machina’s Interdisciplinary Triumph: Bridging Technology and the Humanities
November 21, 2024 | Ruby Wang
When Clara Yang first submitted her project for the UNC music department’s biennial Festival on the Hill, she didn’t anticipate Ex Machina to become as large as it is has become. What began as a series of questions about machines and music has evolved into a groundbreaking multimedia performance.
Ex Machina is Yang’s interdisciplinary project exploring the intersection of technology and humanity. Reflecting on the ever-changing world, Ex Machina questions the identity of humanity by deconstructing the identity of music. Experimental and cross-genre at its core, the project breaks down the barriers of musical genres, reimagining piano performances, and connecting artists across mediums.
After premiering at Festival on the Hill, Ex Machina has attracted attention from both academic and artistic circles. Multiple pieces in the project were selected as one of the 13 semifinalists for the Goodmesh Concours 2024, an interdisciplinary art competition featuring works from 25 countries. Last month, Yang performed the piece “Conception” for at the El Ray Theater. Next year she will perform “Hammers on the Moon” at the Yale School of Music and then the full production of Ex Machina at the National Sawdust.
But prior to Ex Machina’s explosion in international recognition and accolades, it started off with just an idea. Yang kept pondering the dependency of technology on contemporary everyday lives. Eventually, she started drawing parallels between modern technological instruments and the classical piano: “As a pianist, I press keys, and I make sound. It’s a machine I use to translate my thoughts and emotions and how I envision a piece into a clear sound narrative.”
To turn the initial idea into a 70-minute multimedia performance, Yang received support from the Institute for the Arts and Humanities in the form of two grants: an Arts and Humanities Research Grant and a Grant for Underrepresented Faculty. Yang served as project leader, producer, composer, and performer for Ex Machina. She used funds to support the cost of artist fees, travel fees, and receptions. Currently, she’s using the remaining funds to record and release an album from the project. The project was also supported by the UNC Arts and Humanities Grant Studio.
Ex Machina’s program thematically explores Yang’s initial ideas about humanity as an organic machine. The songs evoke the natural, human emotions of living in a highly tech-centric, mechanized world. “Crystal Prelude No. 1,” the first piece in Ex Machina’s program, considers the prevalence of machinery in the “natural” sound world. Reena Esmail composed the piece with Lee Weisert’s (FFP ’19) Cryoacoustic Orb. The Cryoacoustic Orb is a sound installation of a melting ice orb’s natural sound. Then in “Clinamina,” Lee Weisert draws inspiration from the random swerving of atoms the Roman philosopher Lucretius called clinamen. The piece explores the natural, gestural motion of human will and expression, as well as how technology parallels this way of operating. Yang explains how the program “starts from nature because that’s the origin of everything and how we became who we are.”
Technology iterates upon the initial natural condition. Take, for example, the body as the locus of organic mechanisms keeping us alive. Even these natural mechanisms can be understood in terms of machinery. “RoboDream,” composed by Phil Young, considers our desire to construct a “humanoid” version of ourselves, using repetitious sound patterns and skipping effects to mimic the malfunction and monotony of human movements and existence. Constructing a humanoid attempts to distill who we are in terms of mechanisms. As Young explained, “the robot ponders on a very important question– ‘Who am I?’” 
“I hoped people would think about their internal emotions and how they process emotions,” said Yang. Ex Machina’s various collaborations seek to elicit such emotion, such as the installation component of the show by visual artist Xuan. Yang was drawn to working with Xuan because she “has an exceptional gift of creating visuals that evoke immediate emotional responses.”
Self-titled as a “visual musician,” Xuan explains how she conceived of the visuals for Ex Machina: “The visuals came from an imagining of AI machinations, desires and dreams. Embedded in the imagery are forms that bleed, explode, rejoice in celebration, revel in calmness, and sink into despair – like us, like them. In conjuring these landscapes, I looked into photographing physical phenomenon such as the slow melting of ice, shifting between matter states, and memories left by light.”
Other performances also feature former IAH fellows Allen Anderson (FFP ‘00, ‘13), Stephen Anderson (FFP ‘14), Lee Weisert (FFP ‘19) and 2023 Schwab Award Recipient Suzi Analogue.
Yang also received the IAH’s Schwab Award in 2020, which recognizes teaching and scholarship amongst faculty in the arts, humanities, and qualitative social sciences. Yang’s research directly reflects in her teaching.
“Research and teaching are very connected. I try to guide my students to find what they really want to express, helping them to create projects with their own interests,” explained Yang.
In a time when Yang has been thinking persistently about Ex Machina’s themes, she encouraged her students to consider their own relationship to machines and technology. She and Lee Weisert organized “Ex Machina 2” as a continuation of the Ex Machina Festival last March, where students composed and performed projects with electronics. “I wanted them to also experience what it’s like to perform a new work written where there’s no recording to base the sound off of,” said Yang.
In the spring, Yang will also perform Ex Machina as part of the UNC Process Series from March 21-25. Reserve tickets to see the performance.
Learn more about the Arts and Humanities Research Grant and the Arts and Humanities Grant for Research Diversity.
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