This is a mixtape of human essence in response to generative AI trying to bite our style. Listen to a collection of artists sharing their secretive and beloved environments, delights, pleasures, grief, ritual, and desires. AI could never. Resist fake brains. Rebel against AI commodification!
To listen, you must find a physical tape so that AI can’t troll us, scrub it from the digital sphere, and mangle it. The first collection of tapes premiered at XMTR Audio Arts Festival in 2025.
The tapes are always yours to keep, and when listeners found one, they cozied up in the Tape Library at the Festival to listen (pictured below).
[Contributing human artist bios in order their work appears on the cassette tape]
The Perfect Lead
Nico Gonzalez Wisler is a radio maker from Philadelphia. You can usually find them on a dance floor or in a body of water.
Dominoed Heart - West Indies
Natalie Peña Peart is a 1.5-generation Caribbean-American, urban farmer, multimedia artist, and journalist.
We Don’t Talk About the Possibility of Death
Nicole Kelly (NK) is a writer whose work explores loneliness, death, grieving, and intimacy under capitalism, and has been called both “visceral” and “shockingly intimate.” She makes a show called Basket Case.
Posey Purr
William Sammons is a field recordist, musician, and audio engineer best known for his work on the documentary Crip Camp.
Hanoi Hannah
Truc Nguyen is a multi-disciplinary artist. They combine radio, sound design, and music to transmute intergenerational trauma.
Denge Sound Mirrors at Dusk
Isobel Anderson is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, and sound artist from East Sussex, England.
Lightning Riot
Kristina Loring is a sound artist, story editor, and educator who works across genres to make visceral experiences for your body.
The Basket Makers: A Love Story
Stella Sims is an audio and creative producer from Brighton, East Sussex.
Visión Quest with Grand Mother Margarita
Juliana Bohórquez Pinzón is a Colombian artist and systemic expert who guides the Vision Quest and Earth Dance, among other ancestral ceremonies, with the legacy of Grandmother Margarita.
Full Bloom
Veronica Simmonds is a podcast producer, story editor, and audio artist based in Toronto, Canada.
BLACKBODY, WHITE NOISE
Ricardo iamuuri Robinson is an interdisciplinary conceptual sound artist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Beach
Mary Hooper composes complex soundworks combining oral history, field recording, and research.
Of War & Love, Of Love & War
Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin is a Nigerian creative director, cultural producer, and festival programmer from Benin City.
