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Artist: Susan Lim, Christina Teenz Tan, Manu Martin
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Susan Lim, Christina Teenz Tan, Manu Martin:

Lim Fantasy of Companionship for Piano & Orch.

Society currently finds itself at an intersection of technology and humanity as physical forms embedded with Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems fulfil an urgent need for previously unimaginable companions, such as robot caregivers, to address the twin challenges of longevity and loneliness. 

It is precisely this concept of an inanimate-human companionship that pioneer surgeon Dr Susan Lim, together with her project Co-Creative Director, Dr Christina Teenz Tan explore in the ‘Lim Fantasy of Companionship' for Piano & Orchestra, composed by Manu Martin and released on 23rd April 2021 on Signum Records.  Recorded in November 2019 at Abbey Rd Studios, the Lim Fantasy draws its inspiration from fifteen original songs composed for a proposed musical, ‘ALAN'.  It unfolds the story of an inanimate, ‘ALAN' and the journey of its soul, twice teleported, from an animate to inanimate and ultimately into a human being.  The Fantasy is brought to life through the performance of acclaimed pianist, Tedd Joselson alongside the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arthur Fagen, together with solo electric guitar, solo voices and choral ensemble, London Voices.

It is hoped that the Lim Fantasy will inspire a discussion about what is life and what is non-life, a topic which no longer belongs just to the confines of medicine, but which invites the participation of artists, musicians, psychologists, philosophers, engineers, politicians and more.

A pioneer in the field of transplantation, robotics and stem cell research, Dr Susan Lim first introduced the concept of enabling inanimates to be companions of the future at  the ‘Road to the US - India Global Entrepreneurship Summit' in partnership with INK 2017, in Hyderabad, India, in the session ‘Giant Leaps: Thrilling Potential of AI and Robotics'.  Dr Lim has concerned herself with the very real problems of both an ageing global population and loneliness on one hand and disruptive new science and technologies on the other.  Dr Christina Tan, a neuroscience researcher at Stanford University, California has been fascinated by the possibility of enabling inanimates with artificial intelligence.  In the ‘Fantasy', both jointly explore through music the potential of inanimate life and how these factors may influence new concepts of companionship. They see that the bio-engineering of inanimate objects has started to blur the line between life and non-life and feel passionate about opening this up as a global conversation through a creative medium of communication, namely their project  ‘ALAN the Musical', from which the ‘Fantasy of Companionship' for Piano and Orchestra draws inspiration.

ALL PRESS SECURED BY Karen Pitchford • KHJ Communications Ltd