Live Music Is Safe…an AI story
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash
Live music is safe, I swear, well I mean I am pretty certain.
Let’s think about it…
AI is out there causing trouble with recorded music pretty much deepfaking tunes but then certain acts like Grimes, Paul McCartney, and others are embracing it. I am sure programs can be written where computers could self-compose music live and some people might find it pretty awesome but I believe we are a faraway place from Star Wars bars with aliens and machines playing the cocktail hours at our live venues.
The performance of DJs and even singer-songwriters brings out the true emotions of our soul out, that is why we get goosebumps (haha). AI could be taught of course to mimic the emotion of what a set from Carl Cox, A.M.C, or whatever larger act in your favorite genre brings out of you. It is through the life experience and the vibe that these acts feel from the music they are playing and the crowd reaction that brings out the unique track selection to keep up with the energy of the crowd. This is the raw emotion that AI still can not duplicate, even though it might make you believe it can. Let’s go back to Coachella when the 2PAC hologram came out on stage. The producers knew people were going to go nuts so the production of that element was a given so high-energy performance without any on-the-fly elements and you got yourself a kick-ass show. A hologram performance is not AI but it is the closest thing we know of on how AI could be inserted into live music to replace our current performances.
Then how about our feeling about the acts out there in the world? Let’s say if AI got so unrecognizable would the machine or whatever it would look like get a rabid fan base where the AI could reach out to the fans and connect on a human level…hmmm well maybe given how culture changes, I guess we could be doomed if pop culture allows this to happen. I wonder if tomorrow if MIT created a Taylor Swift robo clone that did a new-new era tour that was 6 hours straight and provided a duplicate or even better performance, would the Swiftees abandon the real-life Taylor and go for robo-Swift. How about if Samsung got deep into the technology and created a new k pop group that would crush the competition, like where the fans would wear glasses and depending on how you feel towards the music measured by oxytocin the k pop dude got hotter and hotter to the fan…
Well, that took a turn…
I believe now is the time we have to hold onto our human connections and embrace the true and actual connections we get from each other that allows music culture to touch each and every one of us. This connection brings us together and grimy venues, huge warehouses, and amazing festivals around the world. If we allow culture to go the other way then we might as well give up and insert our lives into the movie Wall-E. I mean with Apple bringing out the Vision Plus one day we could have this type of technology, create our avatar with feeling sensors and beam ourselves into virtual spaces and actually feel like we are there with all of our friends.
Maybe we are doomed…
Well let’s make the most memories we can support your local scene, and support music culture – the human one, but let’s allow AI to take our mundane tasks and assist us to create bigger and better things that will continue to increase the quality of human life.
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