Terra String Quartet represents Yale at Venice Biennale

In February, members of the Yale School of Music faculty shared with the Yale Task Force on Artificial Intelligence their thoughts on the impact technological advances are having in the field of music. “We believe that the coming hegemony of AI across a variety of cultural arenas will precipitate an urgent search for explicitly human ways of knowing and doing, and that we will find them in live performances,” the YSM faculty wrote, “wherever human bodies and minds are placed in dialogue with other human bodies and minds by the demands of a musical work and the unscripted impetus of the moment.” Terra String Quartet cellist Audrey Chen, too, believes that creativity is “reliant on human interaction.”

The Terra String Quartet, YSM’s 2024-2025 fellowship quartet-in-residence — which includes Chen, violinists Amelia Dietrich and Harriet Langley, and violist Chih-Ta Chen — put that belief on display earlier this week at the Venice Biennale. The group performed the third and fourth movements of F. Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80, as part of an event that explored “how artificial intelligence techniques are changing and challenging the creative process today and the implication for future artistic endeavors,” as described in a Yale University invitation. The Yale in Venice event, titled “Foreigner: AI and the Creative Process,” also featured a conversation between School of Music Dean José García-León and Kymberly Pinder, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the School of Art.

Before leaving New Haven for Venice, Audrey Chen and Harriet Langley shared their thoughts on AI, a technology that strives “to be more and more human,” Langley said, adding, “I don’t think it’ll be able to achieve that.

“Music is completely informed by human emotion, which is ever changing, ever evolving,” Langley said. “The whole point of music is that it is indefinable and unquantifiable.”

Music, Chen agreed, is “so human that it seems to me there’s nothing that AI or technology can do to impact that.”

In addition to sharing their thoughts on AI, Chen and Langley spoke about the chance to perform at the Venice Biennale. Langley described it as “a hugely defining opportunity for us,” pointing out that “there is so much artistic significance associated with the culture and history of the city,” and adding, “This is also our first time representing Yale in the world.”

“We feel very honored,” Chen said.

Learn more about the Terra String Quartet’s fellowship at YSM here and visit the group’s website, terrastringquartet.com.