“I wondered whether AI-generated music can be emotional and coherent. In the end, I found it deeply emotional, because hearing a machine sing like me was at the same time eerie, fascinating, and inspiring.” — Portrait XO

Portrait XO (she/they) is a project by producer, singer, and songwriter Rania Kim, exploring collaboration between humans and machines. Compositions from generative algorithms serve as a source of material or a conspiratorial mirror of her own work and self. The AI’s melodies and lyrics are reviewed, completed, and recombined. Alienation and familiarity collide directly in the result: fragmented electronic sounds and glitches merge with catchy pop and soul melodies—sung as a neural duet between Rania Kim and the AI, whose algorithm mimics her voice.

Portrait XO moves at the forefront of new interfaces between technology and art—not only through her award-winning artistic collaboration with AI. Her album WIRE was released at the end of 2022 in NFT-to-vinyl format, as a virtual work that cannot be identically reproduced. With the art and activism collective CO:QUO (CO CREATE STATUS-QUO), Rania Kim also organizes a monthly radio residency on Refuge Worldwide Radio, leads the community and label Sound Obsessed, and co-founded the International Association of Synaesthetes, Artists, and Scientists (IASAS). She lives in Berlin.

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