We are looking for an apartment, tramping up dark stairwells to lean into rooms, another strange place full of odd smells, another makeshift life exposed. Laundry being folded that sits on a stray chair, an aging tea kettle in the corner, big beds squeezed into tiny rooms. But we meet each one with an open heart, with some hard-fought belief that this just might be our future slice of heaven, a doorway waiting to measure how tall V gets, scratching a new mark every few months.
I'm retired now, as far as what one defines as regular work, but I'm not idle. For some time now I've wanted to get my song lyrics out there, but it's a tough climb. I went to a few poetry readings and discovered that rhymes are frowned upon, some sort of credibility issue. So I started presenting my lyrics as oral exercises at music open mic nights. To my surprise it's worked, it's worked really well. I'm getting requests at these open mic nights. "Do 'Dinosaurs Rule!', do 'Certainly Seems'", it's pretty dang fun.
And a guitarist here in town who's in a local act, with a couple of albums in the can, asked me to come up with some kind of improvisational stuff that he and a few musicians he respects could build musical structures around. No planning, just get up there and go. My first idea we called "Fractured Philosophy". I took famous philosophical quotes and cut them in half putting beginnings in one pile with endings in another. The musicians begin playing without a map and I randomly meshed beginnings and endings from the two piles of quotes. The audience, maybe fifty people, dug it. A friend said it was strangely thought provoking even when what I recited didn't quite make sense. And some times it did make a sort of sense. Anyway, we recorded two of those improvisational pieces yesterday, I'll send them to you when they get mixed.
What was important to me was that folks tell me they've never heard anything like it. In this age of rehashing formulas things that are new, original and off the beaten path are getting squeezed out by an art by numbers dynamic. The AI stuff you've referenced is part of that. Art by computer programs is a dubious proposition if you ask me. The human aspect of art is erased. The best art always has a ton of heart in it. Computers, as cool as they can be, don't have heart. When I recite a philosophical mashup I present it as vitally important, as though it's obviously profound. That's what gives it its humanity. A computer can't do that.
I'd compare "computer art" to finding shapes in clouds. Yeah, you feel that bit of cloud looks like a face, and it may well look like a face. But it's not art. The cloud doesn't impart humanity, you impart humanity on the cloud. It's cool, kinda fun, but it's not art.
So perfectly stated. ❤️❤️
I'm retired now, as far as what one defines as regular work, but I'm not idle. For some time now I've wanted to get my song lyrics out there, but it's a tough climb. I went to a few poetry readings and discovered that rhymes are frowned upon, some sort of credibility issue. So I started presenting my lyrics as oral exercises at music open mic nights. To my surprise it's worked, it's worked really well. I'm getting requests at these open mic nights. "Do 'Dinosaurs Rule!', do 'Certainly Seems'", it's pretty dang fun.
And a guitarist here in town who's in a local act, with a couple of albums in the can, asked me to come up with some kind of improvisational stuff that he and a few musicians he respects could build musical structures around. No planning, just get up there and go. My first idea we called "Fractured Philosophy". I took famous philosophical quotes and cut them in half putting beginnings in one pile with endings in another. The musicians begin playing without a map and I randomly meshed beginnings and endings from the two piles of quotes. The audience, maybe fifty people, dug it. A friend said it was strangely thought provoking even when what I recited didn't quite make sense. And some times it did make a sort of sense. Anyway, we recorded two of those improvisational pieces yesterday, I'll send them to you when they get mixed.
What was important to me was that folks tell me they've never heard anything like it. In this age of rehashing formulas things that are new, original and off the beaten path are getting squeezed out by an art by numbers dynamic. The AI stuff you've referenced is part of that. Art by computer programs is a dubious proposition if you ask me. The human aspect of art is erased. The best art always has a ton of heart in it. Computers, as cool as they can be, don't have heart. When I recite a philosophical mashup I present it as vitally important, as though it's obviously profound. That's what gives it its humanity. A computer can't do that.
I'd compare "computer art" to finding shapes in clouds. Yeah, you feel that bit of cloud looks like a face, and it may well look like a face. But it's not art. The cloud doesn't impart humanity, you impart humanity on the cloud. It's cool, kinda fun, but it's not art.