NEW YORK, NY — MAY 5, 2026 — Next week, AI industry professionals will gather in venues across Manhattan for the inaugural AI Week NYC. In a nod to the overlap between this event and NYC’s Frieze Week, an audiovisual art installation — “DATA CENTER NOISE LISTENING PARTY” — pops up in Chelsea, inviting passersby to put on a pair of headphones and listen to AI's aural byproduct.
This experience by the transatlantic art-and-music duo GULFF runs at Printed Matter's Chelsea bookstore (231 11th Avenue), Thursday, May 14, through Sunday, May 17. The installation features original music plus a series of videos created from crowdsourced phone footage and audio clips recorded by residents of communities near data centers, putting this relentless and penetrating low-frequency noise in a new context.
GULFF is Manchester-based composer Owain Kelly (NO CEREMONY///) and Brooklyn-based artist and editor Tod Lippy (founder of the arts publication Esopus). Amidst the media in the pop-up experience, visitors will find the duo’s new single "the rumo(u)r," out May 12. Coining the genre “datacenter-core,” GULFF’s "the rumo(u)r” makes a pulsating electronic track from broadcast news clips of AI datacenter noise pollution coverage.
"It's the auditory byproduct of the time we're living in," Kelly says of using data center noise as a musical medium — ”noise we're forced to hear and at the same time not supposed to notice."
GULFF’s forthcoming album — out September 25, from which “the rumo(u)r” is the second single — is built almost entirely from found audio (robocall voicemails, QVC footage, hold music, a Meta AI cooking demo layered against a men's-rights podcast, crowd noise from a Trump golf tournament, the 2600Hz tone once used in phone phreaking). This “soundscape of late capitalism" is scraped largely from social media screen captures in a process they refer to as “digital field recording.”
The track and the installation debut as backlash against AI data centers escalates to gunfire and Molotov cocktails. In early April, an Indianapolis resident fired thirteen rounds into a city-county councilmember’s home, leaving a handwritten note reading "No Data Centers" on the doorstep. Three days later, a 20-year-old from the Houston area was arrested after allegedly throwing a handmade explosive at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's San Francisco house and threatening to burn down the company's headquarters. A Data Center Watch report counts at least 142 activist groups across 24 states organizing against new construction and roughly $64 billion of projects blocked or delayed over two years as awareness grows.
"Most of the conversation about AI happens on the platforms AI exists to feed,” Lippy says. “We wanted to separate the conversation from scrolling and screens and the algorithm. It brings this experience into the physical world — which is the reality for a growing number of communities in the U.S. right now.”
“Data Center Noise” Installation: Printed Matter, 231 11th Avenue, New York — May 14 through May 17, during store hours. Free.
Single: "The Rumo(u)r" out May 12.
GULFF website: gulffonline.com • Bandcamp • YouTube • Streaming Platforms
PR Contact Fifer Burman | [email protected] | notforeveryone.net
GULFF is Tod Lippy and Owain Kelly. Lippy is an artist, editor, and writer in Brooklyn; he founded the arts and culture publication Esopus, which ran for 25 issues over 15 years and commissioned music from contributors including Grizzly Bear, Neko Case, and Sharon Van Etten. Kelly is a Welsh electronic musician and composer based in Manchester; as one half of NO CEREMONY/// he toured with Pixies and Foals and recorded a Maida Vale session for BBC Radio 1, and his film and theatre work has been commissioned by BAFTA, BFI, Arts Council England, and Sky Arts. They have been collaborating remotely since late 2025 and have never met in person.
