Second Self - a performance lecture by Harry Yeff

Harry Yeff (Reeps100) is an artist and researcher whose practice begins with the voice, the most fundamental and expressive human technology. For Yeff, the voice is the ultimate interface: a medium that carries identity, memory, and emotion while also becoming data, signal, and code. His work explores how this expressive core can be extended into new domains through artificial intelligence and emerging media.

Through projects such as Voice Gems (a 1,000-year archive of human, animal, and AI voices preserved as digital and physical artifacts), the voicing of natural environments, and his exploration of the Second Self, an agentic counterpart that can act as opponent, mentor, or collaborator, Yeff reveals how AI can serve as both archive and creative partner. Developed in collaboration with institutions including Eleven Labs, Bell Labs, and United Nations, these works interrogate how memory, ritual, and identity are preserved, transformed, and reimagined through machine interaction.

This talk proposes that artificial agency can move beyond imitation to become a new artistic language that is immersive, ethical, and deeply human. Central to this is the framework of the Second Self: an AI agent that can confront its creator as an opponent, guide them as a mentor, or work alongside them as a collaborator. By merging fine art aesthetics with neurodivergent perception, experimental design, and voice as medium, Yeff invites audiences into a world where intelligence is not only artificial but meaningfully augmented.