Mahjong in Flux is a live sound performance in which a game of mahjong becomes a system for generating sound through human decision-making, chance and AI image recognition.
The game unfolds according to a set of rules, yet its course is continually shaped by chance and the decisions of others. Players draw tiles without knowing what will come next, decide which to keep or discard, and respond to one another's moves through actions and calls such as “Pon” and “Chi”. Each move can alter the possibilities available to other players, influencing how the game unfolds.
An AI image-recognition system identifies discarded tiles, with different tile motifs mapped to different sine-wave tones. However, the recognition is not always stable. The AI may fluctuate between different interpretations of the same tile, triggering different tones in rapid succession. These sounds accumulate and overlap, with up to twenty tones sounding simultaneously.
The players' voices, the physical sounds of the tiles and the electronically generated tones coexist within the performance. The players' decisions, chance and the AI's fluctuations in recognition continually shape the evolving sonic composition.
The sound emerges through the ongoing relationships between rules, chance, human judgement and AI recognition, as the game and the performance unfold together.
Photo by Nakagawa Akifumi
Performance video — Random Hands / 偶然の手
Documentation of four live performances by ASUNA and Noriko Okaku (6 min).
Mahjong in Flux begins at 4:17.
Documentation of four live performances by ASUNA and Noriko Okaku (6 min).
Mahjong in Flux begins at 4:17.
