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Guardian Unlimited | Together in electric dreams
by Decius at 2:13 pm EST, Jan 18, 2005 |
] Martin and Ruth, aka Spike, the next big girl/boy duo (so
] they hope) add some synth and a new background vocal to
] the mix. He saves the song and she emails it to
] Polyphonic Human Media Interface who, within 24 hours,
] will tell them whether their song will be a hit. When the
] results arrive they hover over the 20in screen and click
] on the returned mail. There is a graph, showing a cluster
] of many dots, like a constellation, and somewhere in the
] cluster a red spot. The spot marks their song, not quite
] a bullseye, but still in the throng. "It's scored a
] seven," Ruth says, scanning down. "We're in. The record
] company will definitely meet us now." Their future
] suddenly looks a lot rosier. This seems ahead of it's time. Quite impressive. I'm going to disagree with Kerry here. This is the future. First, it gets cheap enough for every band to tune every song on the suckometer such that it becomes a hit. Then, it gets cheap enough that everyone with garage band can work against the suckometer. Thats when the music industry really starts to collapse, because your friends start producing billboard quality music in their garage. Then someone decides to eliminate the middle man and simply have the computer compose the music directly. Of course, this enables lots of customization. The end result is that humans will view music as simply a mirror which reflects and re-enforces their emotions. In the same way they use political commentators. In the same way they use clothing. It won't matter that it isn't being made by a person. The idea of people making music will seem quaint. Sort of like having a professional pianist living in your house instead of buying a stereo. Something so expensive and unnecessary that it will seem a little sickening. The machines will do it better. They'll make you feel the way you want to feel, exactly when you want to feel that way, and they'll never bore you with repetitive songs... Don't worry. You'll be long dead when this all comes to pass. |
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RE: Guardian Unlimited | Together in electric dreams
by noteworthy at 9:23 pm EST, Jan 18, 2005 |
Decius wrote:
] This seems ahead of its time. Quite impressive. Earth to MemeStreams ... been there, memed that -- two years ago. http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid5475/ |
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Its all fun and Tivo until someone loses a soul
by Rattle at 10:22 pm EST, Jan 18, 2005 |
Decius wrote:
] Don't worry. You'll be long dead when this all comes to pass. I sure hope so. We will all be listening to completely machine derived techno in the future. Your iSoul will have four buttons one it. One labeled "happy", one labeled "emotional", one labeled "focus", and one labeled "fuck". You will be happy to have your four buttons, and so will all your friends. You will hope that you get a sizable bonus from your corporate masters so you can afford the six button variant, or maybe they will require you to have the one that decides what your moods should be without asking for user input. Your ability to pick up members of the opposite sex will be determined by how long your player's "fuck" button allows you to do your thing, since it now has complete control over your body rhythms. Your significant other must have a compatible unit. Foreplay will be replaced with "sync up". "Wanna beat match?" will become a popular pickup line. It will all go great until some day when a new virus hits the scene that upon infection causes your iSoul to produce a blend of music so calculatedly depressing it causes people to kill themselves. In remix culture style, a variant of the virus that causes people to go on murderous rampages will follow within a week. Bugs will be bugs, they will be squashed. Life will go on, plus a few class actions lawsuits, and minus a few thousand people who did not have their virus definitions up to date. Eventually these new iSoul players will be able to break free of techno and generate their own lyrics too. You may decide to listen to a rap based off the works of Robert Frost, or simply feed your iSoul player text from various RSS feeds. You may find yourself with a chorus stuck in your head that's something about yesterday's NASDAQ performance, the current state of the bond market, or the latest from the Canadian battle front. Everything will be timely and fresh. You will always be excited. You will buy lots of clothes. After this technology exists for about ten years, people will wear them all the time. Just another part of the whole augmented reality thing. Every sense must be used to its fullest potential. They will filter what people say around you (and online) into a derived blend of music to help you remember and concentrate. ADHD will be mitigated. You will always be listening to your email. It will be contextual. You will have several dozen memory periods during the day, they will cycle over time, your iSoul will keep logs. By triggering a certain memory period, you will be able to recall events and information you digested with amazing accuracy. You will not have a choice in the matter, you must do so in order to meet the demands of the modern workplace. What what once for enjoyment will become a required and inescapable part of life. There will be no way to rage against the machine. Art will fully be replaced by function. Concerts as we know them will be a thing of the past. Everyone's music taste is so individual its hard to come together as a group, although ironically everyone is listening to music that is almost identical, abet at different times. The experience of seeing a didactic artist reproduce something based off the most popular shared norms will require a two hour "sync up time" for the audience in order to achieve the same level of enjoyment and attachment experienced alone. Eventually there will be a resurgence of human generated art in the form of choral arrangements. Finally, a new golden age of music occurs as a new generation of artists re-embrace something called "manual instruments" and "human arrangement". |
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RE: Guardian Unlimited | Together in electric dreams
by Shannon at 11:00 pm EST, Jan 18, 2005 |
Decius wrote:
] ] Martin and Ruth, aka Spike, the next big girl/boy duo (so
] ] they hope) add some synth and a new background vocal to
] ] the mix. He saves the song and she emails it to
] ] Polyphonic Human Media Interface who, within 24 hours,
] ] will tell them whether their song will be a hit. When the
] ] results arrive they hover over the 20in screen and click
] ] on the returned mail. There is a graph, showing a cluster
] ] of many dots, like a constellation, and somewhere in the
] ] cluster a red spot. The spot marks their song, not quite
] ] a bullseye, but still in the throng. "It's scored a
] ] seven," Ruth says, scanning down. "We're in. The record
] ] company will definitely meet us now." Their future
] ] suddenly looks a lot rosier. I think the borg used something like this for their music. |
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Guardian Unlimited | Together in electric dreams
by Rattle at 12:55 pm EST, Jan 18, 2005 |
] A computer program is changing the face of the music
] business by allowing record labels to predict a hit at
] the click of a mouse. Is this the death of pop as we know
] it, asks Jo Tatchell, or a new hope for unsigned bands
] everywhere? ] Sounds unlikely? It shouldn't. Because, while no one's
] talking about it, it seems that the whole record industry
] is already using just this process. From unsigned acts
] dreaming in their garage, to multinationals such as Sony
] and Universal, everyone is clandestinely using a new and
] controversial technology to gain an edge on their
] competitors. And just as with athletes and
] performance-enhancing drugs, there is a remarkable
] reluctance to talk about it. But the secret is out: the
] record biz, once that bastion of wayward creative flair,
] is succumbing to the plain old-fashioned science of
] statistical analysis. Hit Song Science, ripping the soul out of a type of critical listening that's existed since the dawn of baroque music. Lovely. More product development then artist development.. |
Guardian Unlimited | Together in electric dreams
by k at 1:56 pm EST, Jan 18, 2005 |
] A computer program is changing the face of the music
] business by allowing record labels to predict a hit at
] the click of a mouse. Is this the death of pop as we know
] it, asks Jo Tatchell, or a new hope for unsigned bands
] everywhere? Hit Song Science, ripping the soul out of a type of critical listening that's existed since the dawn of baroque music. Lovely. More product development then artist development.. [ This was and is inevitable. I'm all for it, for the following reason. As highly commercial music begins to sound more and more the same, the very need to create market differentiation will lead back to fragmentation. There will eventually be a backlash, and in the meantime, I really do think that technology will eventually be able to improve the plight of the unknown artist. When word of mouth can spread everywhere, instantly, the potential is there. Local buzz becomes international buzz. The framework for reputation and collaboration is in it's infancy, but it'll come. That should be more than enough to maintain the community of actual music lovers, and I think it'll grow it, in fact. Maybe not to the point where it eclipses the shiny package market tunes, but the dream is there. -k] |
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