May 18ths

5/18/1995 (Eno Diary) 

“Realized today I’ve spent three years gazing at computer screens and it has got me not very far. In my next studio, as an experiment, I’ll have no computer set-up. The thought of going in in the morning and not switching on is thrilling and daunting...."

[5/18/2025: Yesterday, I created a piece of art that didn’t involve the internet, social media, or AI. It’s important to gauge how we feel when we use, or not use, technology, and then do more of that. You’re not on a hamster wheel. We can delude ourselves that hamster wheels are fixtures of life. Sadly, the avant-garde has been dying. It’s not like anyone’s making ‘pataphysical YouTube videos or performing Schwitters’ Ursonate, whereas these kinds of things were interesting to people at one point].

[5/18/2026: AI is now in the loop of our lives, whether we want it or not. You have to continue to do things manually. In music, I can be more experimental. AI is far too hands-off (hot), but it will become cooler].

5/18/2003

Idea: Loops that are played in traditional fashion, played by musicians, not just turned off and on a computer. (You could also give musicians a sheet of 1, 2, and 4-bar phrases and have them play loops however they want ).

[Became Broken Cello]    

[2026: In the 80s, sequencers and drum machines made it too easy to loop and repeat, but became a fixture of the sound. But as a musician, you want to the musical challenges].

5/18/2005

SNL skit ideas: “The Wrong Show”—where people compete to get the right wrong answer (no one ever wins and everyone’s score is 0). “The inappropriate show”—where guests act inappropriately, for example, acting happy when talking about depressing subjects and vice-versa.

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Cell phone ringtones—the new 45s. In fact, a ring appeared to be set to top the British singles chart. (Crazy Frog Axel F).1 Malcolm McLaren said it was the death knell of the traditional music industry.   

Can we still use the term “music industry?” It should be something like “music informatics”

[5/18/2025: What’s this? Algorithms. I noticed around the time of the release of the first iPhone the world was still operating in the old paradigm, then changed abruptly. It was a new game–social media].

5/18/2006            
    
Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” sculpture is finally done. Artist was there for dedication. He said he was being manipulative, creating a shape that would lead viewers to the vortex under the sculpture. But he never intended it to have a special message. “When you’ve got something to say, sometimes the voice doesn’t come through. When there’s nothing to say, then maybe it has a voice.” (Nice...) 

(2004)

 

5/18/2012

Watched film: Patience (After Sebald). Excellent. Great “ambient” film. 

[Inspired Music For Places IV: Rings of Saturn to some degree].

5/18/2000
 
Interview with Carly Simon on TV. She talked about growing up shy, sitting in the kitchen alone, listening to the philosophical discussions going on in the dining room, having brilliant thoughts and ideas, but not being brave enough to express them. 

5/18/2021

All music exists in a form in which ideally we should be able to react to. According to McLuhan this would be a cool technology and music certainly is. I was just perusing some new AI apps for making (or generating) music. The first test for me is to just listen to the music that’s being generated and I’m never impressed. You should be able to interact with it within 30 seconds. You should be able to say to yourself, “I like this–this is something that I would want to do–this is something that I would spend time on”. But I haven’t seen it. It’s important to be able to play along with it because that’s how I started: I would listen to the radio and play along with the songs. With this stuff there’s nothing to learn. It’s ironic because it’s a machine learning–you’re letting the machine play along with the records. 

[5/18/2026: What a difference only 5 years makes. Back then, AI music was pretty grainy. It’s now good enough to be a “radio” to play along with. Duke Ellington learned music by watching piano rolls, so AI is now that piano roll].

5/18/2024

The order in which we do things has also changed in that text can now generate both audio and video using AI. So it’s easier to start with text, so you don’t have to deal with sound and visuals later; the text automatically does that. But it’s the ideas (not from text) that are now missing from generated art, but you can add those later as well, just as you would add a narrative to a film that was all eye candy. It’s like making the architectural plans for a house you already built.
 
Other strategies:
 
Do the last thing first
Reverse 
 

5/18/2026

Even highly-influenced artists can leave out a pioneer. I recently saw a band that was playing microtonal prog rock, and they didn't list Harry Partch as an influence. When I look back on all the creative things that I’ve done in my life, it’s always been shaped by things that I learned subsequently. One of the exercises that I used to give to some of my music students was to open a music dictionary at random and start to investigate one of the items on the page. This is something that I did myself do a long time ago. I think it’s a good way to branch out and start to be more curious, which transforms the work going forward. What you want is to co-evolve with the work.