In the lecture for this week, we had a good conversation about AI and the future of sound arts cannon. We spoke into thinking about the years ahead. For myself, I have been thinking about this anyway and this lecture struct a thought for me. When I think about the artists I really like such as Madlib and MF DOOM. In their time they were pioneering their music scenes. Using modern equipment that others weren’t using. At the time everyone was using MPC and SP1200 and Madlib was using the sp303 which was criminally underrated. I think it’s easy to want to idealise yourself as your favourite artist. But for me to feel like I’m moving things forward I have to use the things available for me now. And break the current cannon of underground hip hop. I want to do what Madlib did for music back then but now. I want to think outside the box and take things forward.
We also spoke on AI and how to use that in our favour. I’ve never been too fond of AI but this just might be the old man in me. AI does have the possibility to become the most powerful and helpful thing humanity ever creates if done well. I just wonder what will happen to art if AI gets involved. It’s inherently questionable that the abstract process that is art. To say it can only be produced by humans is definitely an unprogressive thought. I just think about art and what for myself at least personally is the errors, the expression. The thought process behind what your doing can and cannot be important. Art is such a subjective thing that I’m sure robots or AI will be able to make art. I just wonder to what extent will we create the cut-off point? Once AI is completely creating its own coding and growing and learning by itself when is it no longer artificial?
I also decided to look Into create.playform.io. A platform that generates images based on the image you give. The AI computer generates random choices based on the samples of the image you give. I messed around to see what I could create. I’m remembering back to the first year when Gareth showed us an Ableton plugin that created an image you submitted into midi onto Ableton. I want to try this again.
