Portuguese producer Diogo Carriço unveils ‘Manifesto’, a posthuman sound manifesto
Diogo Carriço is a Portuguese artist and composer whose work explores the intersections of music, technology, and the augmented body. Through hybrid performances and installations, he crafts a posthuman aesthetic blending acoustic instruments, algorithms, and gestural interfaces.
Couvre x Chefs is proud to present the exclusive premiere of Diogo Carriço’s new single, “Manifesto.” Released on Friday, June 13th, the track emerges as a disorienting work of art—part ecstatic electronics, part posthuman meditation. More than just an experimental piece, it immerses us in a future where human expression, machines, and sound art merge into one.
Built around the Disklavier—a MIDI-controlled acoustic piano that plays itself—“Manifesto” blurs the boundaries between the natural and the artificial. During an artist residency in 2023, Carriço programmed piano sequences that ripple at inhuman speeds, as if the instrument were animated by robotic fingers or haunted by digital ghosts. The artist references a scene from Ghost in the Shell, where a character’s hands multiply into a swarm of high-speed mechanical fingers. Here, that augmented-body fantasy becomes tangible sound.
But “Manifesto” isn’t just a technical feat—it’s a live performance of control and disintegration. Carriço’s left hand manipulates a synthesiser in real time using gesture-tracking, powered by his software, Qi, while his right hand plays the piano. This dual-body coordination creates a sense of ghostly detachment, as if watching a cyborg in a trance. The piano itself is pushed far beyond its classical roots—muted and plucked strings, spectral resonances, warped soundboard characteristics, and surreal attack envelopes morph its familiar voice into something alien.
Rather than delivering a verdict on posthuman evolution, “Manifesto” makes us hear what might come next. At times, absurd robotic interjections—“oi”s and “ui”s from a talkbox—pierce the soundscape like sarcastic system alerts, jolting us out of the dream. It’s a glitch aesthetic, a poetic misuse of precision.
With “Manifesto,” Diogo Carriço delivers a powerful artistic statement rooted in the anxieties of our era: What becomes of the human when it fuses with the machine? And what if the future of art is already here—hidden inside algorithms, waiting to be awakened by augmented hands?
“Diogo Carriço’s Manifesto will be released on all platforms on Friday, 13 June and will be available here.
