Design Informatics Seminar: Stephanie Lamprea and Robert Laidlow
Process Talk: Ecstatic Visions
Soprano Stephanie Lamprea talks about the process of creating Ecstatic Visions, a new album of works for voice and electronics in collaboration with electronic musician Alistair MacDonald, featuring music by Angélica Negrón, Alistair MacDonald, Wende Bartley, Eric Chasalow, and Robert Laidlow. The record explores creation of myths, visions, and confessions, sourcing texts from mystics Hildegard von Bingen and Juana Inés de la Cruz to post-singular AI-generated texts, situating historical figures and modern technology together as oracles and worldbuilders. Stephanie is joined remotely by composer Robert Laidlow who describes his work on the album, Post-Singularity Songs. At the heart of PSS is a creation myth, which tells of how the world began, what reality is made of, and how the beings inside it came to be conscious. Much of the text is derived from conversations with the worldbuilding AI and from a specially created poetry-generating AI called GPT-Pyron. PSS also includes AI-generated electronic vocals, sourced from previous recordings of Stephanie’s voice.
EVENT DETAILS
Stephanie Lamprea [in-person]: Colombian-American soprano
Robert Laidlow [remote]: AI+ Academic Senior Fellow in Music, Kings College London
Talk Title: Process Talk: Ecstatic Visions – the process of creating Ecstatic Visions, a new album of works for voice and electronics.
Date: Thurs 19 Feb, 2026
Time: 16:00-17:00
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, EH8 9AB
PRESENTER BIOS
Stephanie Lamprea
Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea is an architect of new sounds and expressions as a performer, recitalist, curator, composer, and improviser, specializing in contemporary-classical repertoire. Trained as an operatic coloratura, Stephanie uses her voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating “maniacal shifts of vocal production and character… like an icepick through the skull” (composer Jason Eckardt). She has performed as a soloist at Roulette Intermedium (New York City), Constellation Chicago, Kings Place (London), Southbank Centre (London), the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the National Concert Hall (Dublin), the Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), the Hidden Door Festival (Edinburgh), and the Casa da Música (Porto). She has collaborated with leading new music ensembles and bands including the London Sinfonietta, Riot Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, the City of London Sinfonia, Sō Percussion, and Post Coal Prom Queen.
Robert Laidlow
Robert Laidlow’s “gigantically imaginative” (BBC Radio 3) music discovers new forms of creative expression through colliding advanced technology, scientific collaboration, and live performance. His orchestral music includes ‘Silicon’ for orchestra and artificial intelligence (BBC Philharmonic), ‘Exoplanets’, made in collaboration with James Webb Space Telescope astrophysicists (London Philharmonic & Basel Interfinity Festival), and ‘TECHNO-UTOPIA’ (BBC Radio 3 & Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra) which sees the orchestra embedded with newly-developed expressive AI instruments. He is a Senior Fellow at the Department of Music, King’s College London, a governor of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and an Associate Artist of the Royal Northern College of Music.
