CORPUS LIVE – Making a Digital Project Real

CORPUS is a digital initiative. A technical infrastructure, a protocol, a platform. Much of it is abstract and, in a literal sense, bodiless. That was exactly why we needed a moment in which all of this becomes tangible – an evening where music, people, and discussion show that CORPUS is not trapped in theory but is a real project, carried by real creators and a living musical practice. CORPUS LIVE on October 27 was that moment.

The event at Schwere Reiter was never planned as a pitch. We didn’t want to persuade anyone. We wanted to invite people in. To listen, to discuss, to explore. And we wanted to make it clear that this project does not emerge from a tech bubble but from people who take music seriously – as art, as craft, as cultural practice. That’s why we deliberately invited ensembles that embody a strong musical identity. Tetra Brass and Felix Kolb opened the evening with a performance blending acoustic ensemble playing and electronic textures. Later, the Paranormal String Quartet brought their unmistakable mix of groove, classical sound, and improvisation. This mattered to us: CORPUS is not a theoretical data-library exercise; it stands right in the middle of musical life.

Between the performances, we dug into the messy part – the ideas and structures behind the project. Matthias Hornschuh spoke in his keynote about fairness in the creative industries and the structural questions that shape our field. We showed a live demo of the CORPUS Contribution App, opened the door to its AI-powered annotation pipeline, and explained why a new licensing model is needed if AI-based music creation isn’t supposed to stay trapped in old frameworks. We were open about the complexity. We didn’t pretend this could be reduced to simple answers.

The venue was full, both on site and in the livestream. For us, the evening was also a milestone, and perhaps a pragmatic thought played a role: putting an event on the calendar forces a digital project to become concrete. The deadline did its job.

What has stayed with us are responses like this one:

“It was a very nice event. No staged sales show and without the usual hockey stick graphics. Instead, the creative musical process front and center — honest and credible. Thanks again for the invitation.”

If you want to get a sense of the atmosphere, the aftermovie at the top of this page captures it well in two minutes. And the full livestream is available below.

CORPUS LIVE was a beginning. A moment of coming together. A step that made visible what this is about: a project with real people behind it, placing music at its core while building a new infrastructure for the future.

Fotos: Ingolf Hatz
Aftershow Video: Leander Hartung
Live Stream: Boris Kluska

The CORPUS team, from left to right: Luciano Pinna, Lawrence Hoggs, Yannis Vasilakis, Max Graf, Anja Gerscher, Lars Ullrich, Mathis Nitschke, Elsa Büsing, Jacob Andersen. Later Michael Emanuel Bauer