IN CONVERSATION WITH NØELLE

interview by JANA LETONJA

Welsh-Ukrainian producer, vocalist and audiovisual artist NØELLE is redefining what a live electronic performance can be. Blending hyperpop, club music, spatial audio, motion-reactive technology and immersive visuals, she’s become one of the UK’s most exciting emerging electronic artists, even creating the first virtual spatial-audio live show in Fortnite. Her new EP, Are We There Yet?, is her most personal work yet—a vibrant but thought-provoking record exploring AI, digital identity, social media isolation and what genuine human connection looks like in an increasingly virtual world.

Congratulations on Are We There Yet? How does it feel to finally have this EP out in the
world?

Releasing is always a strange experience in the digital world, I keep having to remind myself that it's actually out. But I feel so content with this EP and incredibly grateful for the support of CDR in making this body of work feel like more a celebration, from planning merch and my first London headline show to some very exciting collaboration and remix opportunities following on from the release.

The title asks a simple but loaded question. What does “Are We There Yet?” mean to you?

Are We There Yet? is born out of my social media induced frustration of never taking a moment to appreciate the things I create and achieve as a creative. It always feels like we just have to keep moving onto the next thing after posting and sharing and seeing the likes pouring in from people I've never really met in real life, and at the end of the day, I sit there and ask Are we there yet? Is this it?

I really felt like AI was the best way to express this. We have successfully created a way to process things with just a simple prompt and all we use it for is to generate AI slop content based on decades of other people's careers. This cycle of overstimulation and commercialised perfectionism leads to this tipping point where everything becomes meaningless and so impossibly unachievable that all we can do is sit there and ask ourselves "Are we there yet?"

You describe the EP as your most personal release. What inspired you to open up in this
way?

A breakup in amidst the chaos of a really incredible year for my creative career. I always feel like each release has some forms of personal attachment but this EP felt much more like a mental release of so much built up tension and conflicting highs and lows that I'm so happy has lead to something that I can look back on as a beautiful body of work I've learned to love and enjoy performing and listening back on.

AI is a major theme throughout the record. What first made you want to explore it in your
music?

My first exposure to AI art that really made me curious about its creative uses was Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst's The Call followed by ILÁ x MOTH's Infinite Mix and Beeple's generative landscape works that all explored using AI to create unique, generative experiences based on continuous input to encourage communal interactions within live environments.

Since then, I have been increasingly interested in the use of AI for generative, once in a lifetime experiences where audiences can interact and develop art through their interactions while also receiving something that can never be repeated. I hope to explore these implementations within future immersive projects.

You’ve spoken about feeling frustrated seeing AI generate visuals similar to ones you’d spent years learning to create. How has that experience changed your relationship with technology?

At first, it felt disheartening to see the rise of AI slop across social media and seeing my favourite creators' work being copied and reinterpreted, but in many ways I'm grateful for my work within the tech industry and the ability to look at both sides of AI.

I love technology and love the advancements we are able to achieve through advanced tech such as AI. Through my work, AI has opened the gates of vibecoding and a reinvigoration of creator culture that helps lead to so much advancement super quickly. From my perspective, this helps to advance my work exploring the future of artist-led immersive experiences and significant shifts in the affordability of touring large-scale setups through the influx of new content being created using AI.

As a musician and multidisciplinary creative, AI has also pushed audiences and fans towards seeing the process and wanting to reconnect with people in a much more human way leading to a counterculture against the over-filtered, plastic lives we have grown accustomed to with social media. The influx of AI has helped me learn so much as a visual artist purely through the growth of tutorial based and R&D style content alongside creators and fans wanting to achieve real, human connections through social media.

As a performer, these advancements alongside this shift in audience culture has led to a lot of my success in artist-led immersive experiences. Audiences are tired of being passive participants and the ability to create genuine, human connection is something that I don't think would have been as much of a focus if not for the growth of AI.

Do you see AI as something artists can work alongside, or is it becoming a threat to
creativity?

I feel like AI is another revolution, similar to the birth of the internet or industrialisation, and with each revolution, we always find ways to adapt. With AI, it has made everyone question the things they see more, to ask "is this real?" and it's led to fans wanting to know more about my process as an artist alongside myself being able to learn more abot how other creatives work and perform.

Eventually AI could be something artists could use within their practice, but the oversaturation of platforms such as Suno alongside lack of proper legislation within AI has definitely pushed a lot of creatives to, understandably, rebel against all functions of AI. In my eyes, AI is a tool, never a creator, and I'm always fascinated by artists such as ILÁ and Holly Herndon who find ways to use the technology to create genuine connection and exciting, creative experiences using the tool as a bridge for their creative outputs rather than replacing them as creators.

The EP also tackles social media-induced isolation. Do you think we’re becoming less
connected despite being more digitally connected than ever?

Over the past year, while writing this EP, I had so many conversations with friends that would always mention the things I post about, the highlight reel of my instagram. It made me realise that despite the fact that people kept tabs on things I was doing, I wasn't actually spending genuine time around others. I just felt like I had projected a perfect product of myself and started to feel more and more hollow as time went on.

I'm incredibly grateful for social media as the immediate ability to connect with others has led to most of my career and introduced so many incredible people into my life, but I think we are getting so used to becoming clinically online and seeking digital connection that we forget to actually talk to each other until we start to feel like a shell of ourselves.

Sonically, the EP feels like a step forward. What changed creatively between your earlier
singles and this release?

This EP focused a lot more on live performance and creating moments that I wanted people to experience in spatial audio systems. From explosive builds and drops to synth filled immersive moments that are just so much fun to play live, which I feel has made the EP a lot more human and natural to listen to vs my older works which focus mostly on production for the sake of creating a specific type of track or emotion.

Your live performances combine music with spatial audio, motion-reactive technology and
immersive visuals. What kind of experience do you want audiences to leave with?

I live for those moments where you just lose your sense of self to the moment and feel entirely immersed in the space. Similar to artists like Max Cooper and Imogen Heap, my aim for my use of immersive experiences is to give audiences something that can only be experienced in that moment, all together all at once.

With my recent London headline, I was incredibly grateful to showcase that through my custom projection mapped fabric installation and D&B Soundscape performance where the movement of my hands controls both the spatial audio pannings, sounds and lights of the entire experience.

You created the first virtual spatial-audio live show in Fortnite. How did that project come
about, and what did it teach you?

The Fortnite liveshow really opened my eyes to the concept of hybrid live performance setups and online universes. The project came from a collaboration with an immersive venue called AIX who wanted to explore how games engines like Unreal Engine could be used to control live performance elements, like spatial audio panning and DMX lighting systems.

Since that project, I have been keen to explore the relationship between online and real world audiences and the potential of being able to multi-stream live performances across venues and different spaces, and recently been inspired by artists like Sloucho and Murlo who are using games engines as a way of sharing music and their uniquely creative worlds and identities.

You’ve collaborated with organisations like Ableton and MiMU Gloves. What have those collaborations taught you as an artist?

That being unique and exploring the weird sides of your creative output can be such a beautiful way of paving a different type of career. As a very tech-minded musician, I've really appreciated how organisations like MiMU help to platform FLINTA artists interested in expressing their works in different ways and it's encouraged me to just enjoy the process of pushing boundaries, to keep learning and keep doing shows/experiences that always make me a little nervous.

It keeps my career interesting and always helps me collaborate with really incredible companies and creatives through the passion of creating something new and exciting.

If listeners take just one thing away from Are We There Yet?, what do you hope it is?

Talk to friends, go outside and stop doomscrolling. Life is more than just a screen full of AI Slop.

Finally, what’s next for NØELLE after this release? More live innovations, new music, or
something completely unexpected?

Following on from my the EP release and London headline show, I'm very excited to be touring Manchester and Liverpool with individually unique immersive shows. In Manchester, I'll be presenting Immersion interlacing live electronics, reactive DMX and a string ensemble presented in 7.1.4 spatial audio on 6th August, and Liverpool with another projection mapped installation and spatial audio coheadline show with northern artist Kyami.

After this cycle, I'm keen to develop my work in 3D printing, extended reality glasses/AR and some international artist collaborations with creatives that have inspired so much of my work to date that I cannot wait to explore

TEAM CREDITS:

photography JAY FISHER