GHOST (2023-)
A 1 hour 40 minute performance for four performers/musicians, a custom natural-language-processing system, and a horn band. Also a website and a vinyl record. THE SAVED NIGHT PART II. Video documentation here.
Since 2025: performed as a concert by the band in music, visual art, and performing arts contexts.
After my father died, I gathered 151 books on death, loss, archives, and memory. With Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant and Alejandro Calcaño, I trained a custom, intentionally broken NLP system on these books. The system generates fragmented text, full of ghosts.
I set this text to music with Carmen Quill, Ariadne Randall, and Bryan West. Later we invited my uncle Wayne Horvitz to join us. This music became the core of GHOST.
The first part of the performance is a lecture on grief, AI, the dead, Talmudic philosophy, language, and family history (read a version here). The second part is a choreographic concert: singing and speaking AI-generated text in a bed of synths, piano, viola da gamba, and shimmering metal gongs. Also: gestures, naps, eating round food, and a visitation from a horn band conducted by Wayne.
GHOST uses the structure of an NLP system (text archive, text input, text output) as a way to play with the permanent presence of the past. An intervention into the conversation around AI, and a piece of music-theatre.
Speaking and singing as a way to be with the dead, singing as listening. The room fills up with memories. The dead aren’t gone. For a moment we’re all just words from the past, arranged in a new order.
Alongside the performances, Het HEM commissioned a website version of GHOST for The Couch, with audio recordings (2017–2023), text, video, images, the AI system, an essay, and a longform interview. A vinyl record of the music was released on Celestial Excursions (US) / Het HEM (NL) in January 2025. (Links above).
Presentations:
Microscope Gallery, New York, May 18, 2019 (first version)
DAS Arts/DAS Theatre, Amsterdam, January 30, 2020 (workshop)
deSingel, Antwerp, November 20 2021 (try-out)
SPRING Festival Utrecht, May 24-25 2023 (pre-premiere)
brutWien/Musiktheatretage Wien, September 19-21 2023 (premiere)
Zone2Source, Amsterdam (part of Ghosts in the Machine), 26 September 2023
deSchool, Amsterdam, 27-28 September 2023 (presented by Het HEM and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ)
Credits:
Performance:
Artistic direction: Asa Horvitz
With and by: Asa Horvitz, Wayne Horvitz, Ariadne Randall, Carmen Quill
Musical direction: Asa Horvitz & Carmen Quill
AI system design: Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant, Alejandro Calcaño
AI programming: Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant
Horn band: Pablo Nicolas Rojo Anguita, Lezaam Beets, Michael Moore, Ada Rave, Gonçalo Soares, Fie Schouten, Felicity Provan (NL) Anna Tsombanis, Thomas Wiesinger, Phil Yaeger, Christina Baumfried, Max Nagl (AT)
Advice: Oneka von Schrader & Joachim Robbrecht
Collaboration on stage and costume design: Evandro Pedroni
Shirts & Flags: Le Van Hung
Ceramics: Jacob Bartmann
Hat maker: Monica Gamberale
Booklet design and selected images and collages: Nica Horvitz
Lighting assistance: Theo Emil Krausz
Production: Sophie Menzinger, Theo Emil Krausz (AT) / Waffa al-Attas, Nora Duijf (NL)
AI UX Design for performance: XandraDave Cochran
Previous versions of GHOST included contributions from Bryan West, Martin Brans, Esy Casey, David Bruin and Pawel Szubert
Band photo: Erika Kapin
The Couch:
Web development and design: Simon Dirks
All other texts: Asa Horvitz
Curators: Orpheu de Jong & Maia Kenney
Archival photos: Ann Horvitz, Wayne L. Horvitz, Lee Horvitz, Philip Horvitz, Wayne B. Horvitz, Asa Horvitz, Bill Horvitz, Nica Horvitz, Patti Trimble, Robin Eschner, Josh Gaster, unknown. Kawah Ijen/homepage photo by Esy Casey, ceramics photos by Jacob Bartmann.
Video documentation of performances: Sergio Gridelli (NL) / Ines Bacher & Magdalena Fischer (AT)
Production: Golden Trout Wilderness (NL/USA), in association with Celestial Excursions (AT) and SHOW MACHINE (NL). Co-production: SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Het HEM, Muziekgebouw Productiehuis, Frascati Producties, Musiktheatertage Wien, brutWien. With the kind support of the City of Vienna Culture Department, and the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sports Austria; Amsterdam Fonds voor Kunst; Gemeente Utrecht; Amsterdam Zuid; KlavierLoft Wien. Residency/development: Goethe Institut Hong Kong, Bâtard Festival / wpZimmer, deSingel, Microscope Gallery NYC, Camargo Foundation, MacDowell, DAS Theatre, ELIAS 2069. With thanks to: Carmen Quill, Ariadne Randall, Wayne Horvitz, Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant, Alejandro Calcaño, Bryan West, Robin Eschner, Oneka von Schrader, Joachim Robbrecht, Nica Horvitz, Martin Brans, Esy Casey, David Bruin, Cara Hoffman, John Tarrant, Silvia Bottiroli, Edit Kaldor, Andrea Bozic, Scott Gibbons, Mala Kline, Gary F. Brown, Robert Bosnak, Sabine Cmelniski, Eliza McKelway, Mazlum Nergiz, Andrej Nosov, Grzegorz Reske, Marta Keil, Mark Timmer, Joost Heijthuijsen, Orpheu de Jong, Maia Kenney, Simon Dirks, Saskia Reynolds, Julian Hetzel.
For Bill Horvitz (1947-2017)
Press:
“None of the new releases in January 2025 were stranger than GHOST, a series of songs that meditate on loss, grief, mourning… collages of elliptical imagery, a weird poetry to it… a startling vision of the future of music.”
John Schaefer, WNYC’s New Sounds (NPR)
“An all-star, all-art ensemble”
Iggy Pop, BBC Radio 6, February 2025
“GHOST is something eerie, revelatory, and cathartic… you’ll probably never hear anything like GHOST… the honesty and fearlessness with which this project is approached is palpable, infectious, and appreciated and loved more with every listen.”
Chris Ingalls, PopMatters (8/10), top 10 Experimental Albums of 2025
“The best sort of experimental music challenges our understanding of what we think we know, and GHOST stands as crucial new work, sparking discussion of what grief and creativity are amid the evolving relationship between human and machine intelligences.”
Ernesto Aguilar, Treble Magazine
“Cryptic, Singular, and Emotionally Unguarded.”
Attic Magazine, Album of the Day
Additional coverage:
A Closer Listen | Gonzo (Circus) | Old Grey Cat | Italian National Radio | Creative Audio Newsletter | Interlocuter Interview | Stereogum | I Heart Noise/Cosmic Church | The Moderns | Brooklyn Vegan | Everything is Noise | Rosy Overdrive | Polish National Radio