Scribe: Machine Learning, Parafiction, and the Perversion of Practice

Abstract Scribe (2022) is a choral work for three voices. It is a multidisciplinary project that encompasses paleography, machine learning, transcription, and performance. Furthermore, Scribe is a work of parafictional art where fact and fiction overlap, conventional practices of paleography and edition-making are playfully reconfigured, and supposed historical authenticity is employed as a compositional material. This paper describes the creative processes in the making of Scribe before evaluating aspects of the uncanny and material agency. It draws upon autoethnographic analysis before contextualizing this within the psychoanalytical criticism of philosopher Slavoj Žižek.