Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk is a collaboration between Jonathan Chaim Reus and Jaap Blonk that brings the vocal labor behind AI voice models to the stage. In live dataset-making performances, Blonk engages in a vocal battle with his AI-generated voice clone, the Bla Blavatar, performed by Reus. In each performance, Blonk carefully performs "Dataset Poems" as his voice is recorded live, with each recording contributing to a training dataset intended for future public use and improving Bla Blavatar. 

The algorithmically generated poems are written in RPA, a hybrid unicode notation inspired by the legacy of typographic scores and phonetically balanced texts used in speech research, ensuring statistical diversity within the dataset. The structured dataset recording effort gradually escalates into improvisational exchanges, evolving into an absurd "battle" between the vocal capabilities of human and clone. 

The Bla Blavatar employs a custom real-time AI voice instrument called Tungnaá, developed in collaboration with Victor Shepardson. Tungnaá (mis)appropriates techniques from autoregressive TTS neural networks, enabling real-time performance by rapidly entering text and symbolic notation. Tungnaá embraces a design principle of technological pluralism, not assuming as pre-defined notions of what a "voice" is or should sound like, and allows for invented languages and unconventional notations. 

Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk is an absurdist take on the cultural fascination with AI avatars and the gold rush of creative automation. Rather than focusing on the awe of hyperreal vocal synthesis, it foregrounds the messy labor involved in the datafication of voice. The work challenges trends of generative AI systems to lock-in assumptions about what an ideal voice should be, inviting audiences to consider the hidden labor and, for Blonk, a lifetime of craft, behind AI voice, while humorously underscoring humanity’s paradoxical endeavor to automate its own expressive capacities. 

Performance, notation and dataset creation: Jonathan Chaim Reus and Jaap Blonk
Research and development of Tungnaá: Victor Shepardson and Jonathan Chaim Reus 

With support from:
PiNA – Association for Culture and Education
Intelligent Instruments Lab, University of Iceland
Stroom Den Haag
S+T+ARTS AIR: funded by European Union and co-funded by PiNA 

The jury found Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk to be an exemplary demonstration of the symbiosis between artistic practice and technological development. Throughout the entire AI pipeline, from data creation to model training, artists' perspectives were deeply involved, shaping the process at every stage. This collaboration did not aim to replicate human abilities for the sake of imitation, but to expand the range of artistic expression, particularly in the field of performance. The project showcases how AI technologies can open entirely new artistic possibilities, serving as a tool for extension rather than substitution. The project stands out as a strong example of how artists can actively and creatively influence the development of AI, not only by using the technology but also by contributing fundamentally to its design and purpose. The jury recognized the project's articulation of a future in which technological systems function as collaborators in artistic practice, expanding the scope of human expression rather than displacing it.