Thoughts On Ancient AI

 

The idea behind the Ancient AI album was that there is an artificial intelligence that is built into humanity and is a timeless phenomenon–it’s not something that we just invented; it’s always been there in nature. What I was getting at, at least sonically, was something that sounded broken because I wanted to hold the mirror up to society and show its reflection. I’ve done a 180 since 2016, when things got unnerving in the US and the world so it’s essentially a form of mirror art. I’m of two minds about mirror art: sometimes it’s interesting in a postmodernist sense, so it has a glitchy machine-like quality to it. 

(We’ve been making glitch art for some time now. Lots of artists datamosh video as a way of showing that the world is broken, so it was my way of showing that as well. But now, when I relisten to it I think a lot of it is kind of un-listenable–at least with my current ears, because I now consider myself a metamodernist and wouldn’t want to revisit it. Postmodernism might be on the way out, so I made some videos and shut it down). 

Now that we see where the future is heading, I don’t think I would want to make mirror art. Younger artists will still do it because it’s fun, as you don’t realize the ramifications of it–it’s not affecting you directly. (That’s another facet of postmodernism, which is a distancing from what’s actually happening. It allows us to carry on with what we do). But now people aren’t feeling comfortable with anything and I’m not feeling comfortable with doing things that are postmodernist–although that might change. 

Postmodernism is interesting because it’s based on ideas rather than skill. But in visual art I’m not a skilled artist, but I’m a skilled musician so I can work in different genres. I like what Gerhard Richter has done in a wide range of areas and it all works together. I think that’s where I’m going. #riff 

3/6/2024