LATENT SPACES_Step inside a computer model at SEESAW

Technological systems shape our everyday lives in ways we rarely see. What if that changed? What if you could actually step inside one? This October, Manchester sound artist Vicky Clarke (aka SONAMB) transforms SEESAW’s basement into Latent Spaces – a new installation that turns the hidden workings of machine learning into something you can hear, see and stand within.

At the centre is Clarke’s Aura Machine – an imaginary computational model combining spatial audio, metal sculpture, cotton drapes and moving images. Once inside, the audience can experience a materiality in flow, where sonic echoes of past technological eras emerge, morph and fall apart.

The raw material comes from Manchester’s own industrial heritage: the churn of cotton looms at Quarry Bank Mill (where Clarke’s father once trained as an apprentice electrical engineer), the hum of electricity, the scrape of glass and metal. Clarke recorded these sounds herself, then used them to train an early, deliberately lo-fi neural synthesis model (PRiSM’s SampleRNN, developed at RNCM) – now itself a kind of historical relic. The result is an emerging machine language built from echoes of industry.

This is where latent space comes in: the hidden zone inside machine-learning models where data shifts, recombines and takes on new meaning. Some computer scientists even describe it as a kind of ‘dream space’ for AI, where patterns surface that aren’t directly visible in the data. Clarke makes that abstract idea tangible – industrial recordings colliding with algorithms, histories remade in sound. The venue is part of the story, too. Occupying a heritage textile building, SEESAW’s basement layers computational futures over industrial ghosts – both sites of invention and flux.

Latent Spaces also speaks to now. We’re living in an era of invisible systems and accelerated technologies, where machine learning reshapes the world at speed. Clarke responds by reframing these systems as slow, local and DIY – a way of reclaiming control and inventing new symbols for understanding our technological present.

Clarke has worked at this intersection of machine learning and musique concrète since 2019 – from her AURA MACHINE live AV work (released on LOL Editions) to Neural Materials, a commission fusing AI, sculpture and electronics. Latent Spaces is her first solo installation, and her most immersive exploration of how hidden systems might be reimagined through art.

For the tech-curious, the datasets are all her own (no scraping), trained locally with Dr Christopher Melen at RNCM, using open-source models – StyleGAN (2019) for visuals (trained on a custom Techno-Symbolic dataset) and SampleRNN (2020) for sound (trained on a custom Post-Industrial dataset). For everyone else: expect a strange, sensory trip where Manchester’s industrial ghosts meet today’s algorithms, and where shadowy systems are briefly brought into the light.

Audiences can experience the work at a free, ticketed preview on Thu 23 October, where Clarke will discuss the project alongside Sound & Music in between the first three showings. After that, the installation runs across the weekend – Fri 24 to Sun 26 October – with 20-minute presentations every half hour in the SEESAW basement (free, no booking required).