Lee Barry's Blog, page 7

12/1999@25

 12/1/1999Warm for December, 55 degreesThe most interesting “books” to read in this last month of the century will be newspapers and magazines as they will report, as well as fuel the hysteria and apocalyptic thinking. WTO Convention in Seattle awash in the protest over environmental and labor issues. (The American Tienanmen Square.)12/10/1999      On the new

On Revivals

Revivals are great in anything. The architecture in DC or in all older major cities includes Roman and Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and so on. Postmodern architecture was a revival of decoration, postmodernism in art was a return of representation. In music you can revive a sound fairly easily by using a Hammond organ and analog synths. To revive Disco, just use everything you would have been

Better, But Still Not Good

After using AI for music the past month, some thoughts/takeaways: Music isn’t a toy. While it's amusing to hear how songs could be reinterpreted, those interpretations usually can’t easily be played on a guitar or piano without lots of rewrites. This is because it’s all a sonic confection. (Music is shockingly unforgiving without some degree of skill. Postmodernist approaches have always let us

Observing Versus Creating

 Using AI to generate art or music involves shifting your role as a creator and a viewer/observer/listener. Simply generating content is mostly an observer role. Creator roles are much slower and involve experimentation, which is much different than generating take after take and finding the ones that work as art. The other day I generated some music based on a diary entry from November 2004

Idea To Product

 Charles Eames' WorkbenchThe best way to learn something new is to find out (in the easiest way possible) what something is capable of, then immediately do something with it. When you see what music can do and how it works, you immediately want to make music. Another way is to copy or emulate, then follow that path—like tracing an image. Rote learning can sometimes be like going around the

Is It Art Yet?

 AI NoirAnyone on the planet can now generate art and music, but would it be Art writ large, as it has been defined historically throughout the ages? In one of the lectures of the late art historian Kirk Varnedoe he posited (in the context of the sometimes confounding minimalist work of Robert Morris, Carl Andre, and Donald Judd) the analogy of the kid in the backseat asking, ""Are we there

Music Of Language (Cont)

As good as AI is at the moment for quickly churning out completed songs, on closer analysis they aren't as good as humans have historically written them. As good as the "singers" are they don't get the right music in the lyrics. A question I keep returning to: Is sound a song? In this case, yes, because it sounds good as a production, but they are far from well-written songs. Even after songs are

Music In Language (Cont)

As good as AI is at the moment for quickly churning out completed songs, on closer analysis they aren't as good as humans have historically written them. As good as the "singers" are they don't get the right music in the lyrics. A question I keep returning to: Is sound a song? In this case, yes, because it sounds good as a production, but they are far from well-written songs. Even after songs are

On Q

 Some thoughts on a truly unique musical life:His primary roots on a professional level were in the jazz world--that's where his heart was. There was something about jazz that was always a challenge [in that it wasn't predictable].His real love was orchestration.His jazz experience is reflected in everything he does, but it didn't prevent him from venturing into a wide variety of musical

Representaional Frames (Cont)

I recently stumbled on an article I had saved about an art exhibit in my area about making art out of the data of everyday life, and I realized that's what I have been doing all along: If you become a collector of life you can develop your own "internet" ("internette") that naturally creates its own hyperlinks through the process of encoding—like the encoding of memories. Per Cory Doctorow, we