Tom has become synonymous with the use of AI in visual arts. I ask if people now look for more of the same from him: “I seem to have positioned myself by accident where suddenly people are finding out about using AI for animations, AI for artwork so I’ve had a lot of work recently where I was developing on the job how best to use these techniques”.
His video for HAAi “Baby We’re Ascending” still looks like nothing else. Where a trio of dancers overlaid with bird plumage and flowers dance against a morphing backdrop of stark black, popping clouds and then a lush psychedelic Forrest that opens up. The title itself has become a useful shorthand, but it’s important to not forget what it is and what the piece evokes:
“It was a weird process of trying to trick it (the AI) into turning these dancers into these sorts of weird flowery, bird god things. I had to trick it into thinking that the dancers look like birds, a bit more colourful, change the colours. I ran some weird processing on the video and only then did the AI pick up and was like “Okay, I see what you’re trying to do here.””
Crucially, Tom had to continuously manipulate and use the AI as a tool to arrive at his vision. He was steering it. Not vice versa. There is the impression that the coming of AI makes the artist obsolete but during this process the tech was nothing without the artist.
When you look at it this way, through the lens of a tool. You can see how AI appeals to Tom. Someone who’s always been a true student of form. He talks of his love of the psychedelic garage bands of the 60’s (from things like the Nuggets compilation) and its evident from previous interviews around his love of synths. Tom frames his path into this medium through what came before:
“I got very into generative work which was very much inspired by old techniques that Eno has been using for ages. Delivering a system in which you want a thing to happen but you don’t want control over everything. We have been in an era of music where precision is everything. What I like about early electronic music is that it was super living”
Tom sees AI as a potential remedy to an era we are now in of over precision. Where the instability of it offers something truly new. Something that is rare in the Postmodern era where “everything eats everything”. He makes the point that all music history features “borrowing” too and that AI is only the latest chapter in that:
“It seemed like nothing came from nowhere and you could easily trace where record influenced that and scan it for a decade. It seems to me like everyone is pilfering or pinching consciously, unconsciously. Claims to be a “new thing” is intellectually dishonest in some ways. Did someone ever have an original idea that shook the world or are all ideas are just different combinations and reconstructions of things that are already out in the world. AI is the most radical tool we’ve had to explore this in a long time.”
Case in point being when Missy Elliott’s “Lose Control” from 2005 comes on over the café radio and Tom points out that it features a sample from Juan Atkins’ Cybotron song “Clear” from 1983 which lifted its melody from Kraftwerk’s “Hall of Mirrors” from 1977. Phew.
He was inspired towards the medium when he heard Holly Herndon’s and Mat Dryhurst’s Interdependence podcast. A piece that he still returns to. It reinforces the idea that AI is simply the latest chapter in the history of music – rather than its disrupter/destroyer:
“Kraftwerk had the opportunity to do that for the first time. They set the template for electronic music and we’re still feeling the ripples now. We have another moment to do new shit!”
He feels that it is very much still in its infancy. Like the early stages of synth music where it would be used to replicate existing music like Bach: “This isn’t a new scary thing; this is something that’s always been there. I feel that there will be ground-breaking work in the next 5, 10, 15 years. It will have the kind of ripples Kraftwerk had.”
Given Tom’s academic approach I ask if he has any ideas about where to take the Tech itself as a builder / coder:
“No. There is an eco-system going on and I am an end user. Robert Henke of Ableton talked about this, 80% of the time you’ll spend building the thing and 20% of the time you’ll go making the music you built the thing for in the first place. So, I just stay away from that”
He is still close to the community that occupies this space via Discord. Where the turnaround time of advancement is something genuinely exciting for the artist: “I just hopped onto Discord with guys who were at the absolute bleeding edge. Very different from Ableton where you would have to wait two years or whatever to get the functionality you wanted. Now that’s kind of like two days making a request and someone actually bothers to do it.”
In framing AI within the grander context of music history, Tom suggests that even criticisms of imperfections that people level at it will come to be its defining feature: “Stable Diffusion is really bad at hands. It will draw a hand with 8 fingers and people are down on it. Personally, I think that’s actually a new aesthetic. Like Eno said, “Any new medium, what’s wrong with it becomes the defining feature of it”. I think it’s funny that something genuinely new might come from something that recycles everything.”
It seems an extension of the way Tom uses synths as well. A potential tool that also acts as a foil: “I was looking for ways to have an interaction or conversation with the program. So it would spit something back at me. Whatever would do that best”
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admin2021-07-16 16:20:002022-01-14 11:16:31Anyma / Digital Lanscapes
