Category: music thoughts

My original thought, and expanding on the theme.

My auditory and visual arts use technology and randomly generated unintended noises based on the use of saturated and distorted effects on generated and sampled sounds. I do the same with video and illustration. I also incorporate AI-generated imagery into videos and still pictures to enhance the whole.

Visually I am also using video synthesis on random seeds and live video feed through specific programs to make one-time unique patterns that react to current sounds and beats at the time of creation.

Who am I to judge another artist because they use the medium of pure text to have technology manipulate it into an image?

I am an average vocalist that uses technology to make things I do vocally interesting. (not autotune, but other effects) I distort and modulate my stringed instruments so that the analog input comes out as something unattainable acoustically otherwise.

I would love a cybernetic implant that would allow me to “play” audio and visual instruments to create a sound and video-scape in real time using nothing but my mind while I play instruments to accompany it.

AI is simply technology. Plain and simple. It will not generate art on its own without input of some kind. It will be directed to auto-generate by some creative force. That will be the programmer, the human inputting prompts, the variables changed out during implementation. Any number of things eventually lead back to the person creating the generating program. If this is not a form of art, then nothing we do with technology is art.

From the moment we started banging rocks together or sticks to create sounds our bodies are incapable of creating (not counting artists like Michael Winslow) we are using technology for art. (He often uses effects and the response patterns of microphones for his noises.)

Anything you can do with and to your body would then be the only “pure” art. Voice, hands, feet, and any other extremities. The moment you use echo in a cave or hallway, you are incorporating more than your body. A stick is a technology when used as a tool. While there are examples of slap and vocalized percussion and acapella music of all kinds in chorals and choirs, we need more mediums of expression.

Visually you have limited tools at your disposal. Glossing over that the use of a wall could be technology, You have various bodily fluids that dry into different colors at different densities to create art. You can form long hair into a brush that you wear and comb it into different sizes. Any use of outside pigments, brushes, knives, or palettes is technology.

For moving visual art, it gets harder. When does a costume become technology? Props are definitely technology. Lighting to create mood is technology. Hell, the stage could be considered technology if it enhances the scene outside human influence.

Finally, the written word. Sanskrit to online bitching, it is all technology. Finger painting your thoughts onto naturally occurring surfaces with body fluids would be about the limit to what would be considered the use of technology. There are entire societies revolving around the spoken word. Oral histories are passed down from generation to generation. The Uluru people (An accepted term Indigenous Australians use for the continent prior to occupation, based on a major tribe’s language.) are one of the best examples of this. They have art and history with minimal technology and are so accurate with their history that we can match it to geological events. They still use technology but would be the closest example of what we are discussing here that I am familiar with.

This is all opinion. Art is subjective, and technology should be used to enhance it at all levels. It makes art more accessible. I hate gatekeepers. Technology helps me get the noises in my head out into the world so that others may suffer… I mean enjoy it. I am on several discord servers where I see people spend hours refining a single prompt to get one picture generated from an AI server. You know they got what they were looking to create when they stop posting to the thread. These are people who may not be able to use other tools to get their vision out. Maybe a physical limitation stops them. Access to expensive tools stops them. Open AI servers and a keyboard enable them to get what they want out into the visual realm.

I am not one to judge or restrict them.