November 23rds (Manner of Smoke)

11/23/1998

The recording and manipulation of sound loops are the future of music, although the power of computers is the essential element of such prospects. But people will always be impressed by the artist who displays some skill and not relying on computers to create art. The real skill is the artistic eye (ear), and the sense of how and why the product should exist.

[11/23/2024: The power is certainly here now, and even more power in another 25 years, but to what end in terms of real skill? I find that I feel happier when I'm engaged with music directly, playing an instrument and writing notes on a staff. It's not produced at all, and I don't expect it to be. The rub between AI music and real music might be in the expectations: People expect music to be perfectly produced, and that is what we get from AI music, but it puts the brain in a different mode, which I think may make it more prone to anxiety and depression. Everything we do is changing our brains in some way. The danger of AI-generation is that it makes us addicts, which is different from flow experiences. Addictions are a kind of flow experience,  but they are “sugar highs”].

11/23/2002, Saturday

Stopped at Art Institute for new Michelangelo exhibit. You walk in thinking "these are the originals". You've always seen them on postcards and now the real McCoys. Interesting: They really knew how to get the 3D effect—the subjects seemed to jump off the canvas. 

[The 3-D effect is sfumato, which Leonardo da Vinci described as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke". In music, ambient music is a form of sfumato.]

11/23/2022 

Book: The Status Game. I particularly liked the "Tyranny Of the Cousins" chapter. Both books have interesting insights into our mammalian nature which evolved for survival and we are naturally inclined to behave accordingly. We engage in cruelty but pretend we don't know why or that it's not our fault...The cruelty of humans is now back in play as we see in the world today.