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Machine Listening Songbook (5-x)

Date:2024
Credit:Machine Listening (Sean Dockray, James Parker, Joel Stern).
Live performers: Jennifer Walshe and Tomomi Adachi.
Index: performance

View the official documentation for this performance on the Machine Listening website

Machine Listening, Machine Listening Songbook (5-x) ft. Jennifer Walshe and Tomomi Adachi, 2024, performance at SOFT CENTRE SUPERMODEL, Victorian Trades Hall. 31 August 2025. Photo by Will Hamilton-Coates.

Machine Listening, Machine Listening Songbook (5-x) ft. Jennifer Walshe and Tomomi Adachi, 2024, performance at SOFT CENTRE SUPERMODEL, Victorian Trades Hall. 31 August 2024. Photo by Will Hamilton-Coates

About

Originally, we were commissioned by SOFT CENTRE to make a performance at the State Library of Victoria, but due to media reported actions taken by the library to limit freedom of expression (about Palestine) it was moved to Trades Hall. We had been working on a 'read along' performance in the famous dome reading room, which would have been about the history and recent explosion of audiobooks and the current state of reading more generally.

With the change in venue, the 'read along' didn't make as much sense and so we gathered together some songs we had been working on that told the corporate history of Suno in music created with Suno and developed an album to be performed live, which was Songs About Fucking Suno. It includes songs of corporate hubris and CEO-brain commentary on literacy and reading as well as music and we thought of it as the newest iteration of the Machine Listening songbook.

The songbook is a media technology. Like all songbooks, this one is open-ended. It will keep growing. The first four entries were produced during our residency at Unsound 2023, in response to the festival’s theme: Dada/Data. This iteration, Songs About Fucking Suno, was performed with improvised vocals from the incredible Jennifer Walshe and Tomomi Adachi in August 2025.

Presentations