July 16ths

7/16/1997

Interesting interview with Pete Townshend on XRT. I like the idea that music is storytelling, much like what the African Griots do. He said that he thought jazz was the highest musical form.

[7/13/2025: One has to wonder where jazz has gone. It can’t be in AI because AI doesn’t (and can’t) improvise. It can generate permutations based on inputs, but not like humans can. It is a sacred art form].  

7/16/2000

Program on NPR by Brook Gladstone about music journalist Jason Zasky who started a magazine called Failure. Interesting that something we used to dread so deeply can be so proudly displayed. Same for new Big Brother show. The sad thing is that our sense of irony will affect us directly in the future.     

The "black-out" poetry riff:

 

7/16/2006

“Uncanny Valley” was a term coined by Mashiro Mori to describe the emotional response of humans to robots. He theorized that as a robot became more human-like, the emotional response of humans became increasingly empathetic, until a boundary point where they looked more “zombified” (the perceptual boundary of real and fake).

 [7/16/2025: I’ve noticed that when I listen to TTS voices, especially in Google NotebookLM, I find myself “entraining” to its logic–thinking along the same lines. This also relates to whether AI music can have soul. I have been emotionally moved by some of the music, but without it feeling uncanny. It could be having a mirror neuron effect].    

7/16/2024

Creativity requires exertion. You have to start using muscle to move and make things, as opposed to just planning things. A real workable Plan is a way of using muscle. I decided to do things out of order and make the album art and list all the titles that would be on it. This is like constructing the plinths and vitrines that will display the works. Now all you have to do is fill those spaces. You can’t have a bunch of plinths and empty vitrines lying around.