The Illiac Suite - Music and AI

This is an automated AI transcript. Please forgive the mistakes!

This is The Iliac Suite, a podcast on AI -driven music. Join me as we dive into
the ever -evolving world of AI and music, where algorithms become the composers and
machines become the virtuosos. Yes, this music and text was written by a computer,
and I am not real, but I am and my name is Dennis Kastrup.
Hello humans! Nice to be back here in the Iliac Suite for episode 16.
This is my podcast and I can do whatever I want. So I had to skip one episode
last month. I'm sorry about this, but it was not a decision I took. It was a
decision I had to take because due to some scheduled problems, I was unfortunately
not able to record this new episode as Soon as I wanted it. I'm sorry about this
But that means on the other side in the meantime. I met and I found a wonderful
artist to talk to Senaida identifies as they S -e -n -a -i -d -a I saw them for the
first time at the New Visions Berlin Festival, an event that had its first edition
in the beginning of September this year. If you are into music and technology, I
highly recommend New Visions Berlin. It was a wonderful festival with wonderful
people, interesting people, amazing subjects about new technology and music.
I'm sure there will be a second edition next year. Check it out. I will link the
event also in the notes of this episode. That's where I met Schneider because we
were talking on a panel about Generative AI and music. But I'll leave it now to
them. Schneider to tell you more about the amazing work that you can find online
about them. This is the interview I did. My name is Schneider. I am a
transdisciplinary artist, technologist, sound architect, DJ, curator, creative
entrepreneur, all the things. A lot of my work focuses around sonic cyber feminism,
generative AI, and post humanism and sustainability. And I also have an artist
collective, which I founded in 2023 called We Are The Future, which is currently
based here in New York. And it's also a label which we're working on the first
compilation release right now. So you have a lot of things going on in your life.
I'm really impressed when I first saw you and I first saw what you're doing. It's
so many different things and different styles also maybe on the one side.
Tell me a little bit how you or maybe in the last, you just mentioned it, but
what are you, in those fields, what are you focusing on? Maybe not about the AI in
the beginning, just tell me a little bit in general, which of those projects is
really important for you in the last maybe two or three years? What's been going on
and what can we hear from you? - For sure, so I recently just graduated from NYU's
Clive Davis Institute of recorded music where I went to undergrad and I'm currently
doing my master's at NYU's interactive media arts low residency program. So for the
past four years I have been essentially doing school in 2020 which is the year that
I came to New York. I was working on a company.
I founded a music technology company working on music neurofeedback called MySynth and
we had participated in a few incubators and we were doing research on music
information retrieval through brainwaves. And so from 2020 to 2022,
I was working on that project. And I kind of pivoted in at the end of 2022,
I came to Berlin actually for the first time and I fell in love with the techno
scene and the music scene there. I had never really been like a rave or party
person until then and so it like really took me by surprise and I fell in love
with it. Which is a common story. Yes, exactly. The cliché.
- You lived the cliché. - Well, I did. So after I came to Berlin, I started DJing
and in the last year in 23, I spent a lot of time getting into the DJing scene
here in New York, exploring a lot of different venues and I basically finished the
year playing 103 shows. So I just dove right into it.
I had a music background, so it wasn't too difficult. And yeah, I got to do some
really fun shows like New York Fashion Week, Popcon, I played some award ceremonies
and obviously like some of the bigger clubs here like Bossa. Yeah. Nice.
And when did AI sneak into your work? Honestly, I always I always kind of asked
this question a little bit because I remember the first time I was hearing this a
little bit and how I was like a more I kept my disc I'm honest I was keeping my
distance to it I was interested I was curious but I was like in the mood of
what's going on there do I want to go there and I remember that I was hearing
stuff and I thought like that's interesting but it didn't kick me as much as in
the last two or three years I mean how did it sneak into your life? You know,
it's interesting because so a bit of background, my dad worked as an IT consultant
for over like 25 years now. So I grew up around computers and he is,
I'd say that he is the person who influenced me the most to be a futurist. I call
myself a futurist because he's always been looking at what might be possible to
build in the future, especially with like computers and technology. And so it was
actually around 2019, 2020 during COVID when I first heard about Google Magenta.
And that was like when they just launched it. So I was looking at the different
open source code that they had on the Magenta site. They had like different little
applications that you could play with. And then really shortly after they launched
the Ableton in and so I started using it and that was like four years ago now and
I remember exploring like different apps and applications for this technology even in
2020 we were working on this like metronome app that used AI to detect if you're
on the beat and then later on I incorporated it more and more into my production
process and so with this album it's kind of taking a different approach to it which
is not just using AI to create but rather as a distribution medium almost and a
collaborative medium which I think is the direction that AI is going to go in
because you know we we've all heard the AI generated music and I feel like I feel
like for me, it's referencing back to Dadaism and even photography is an analogy
that we always use, right? Like the advent of photography kind of killed realism
painting, but in some ways it also opened up this whole new abstract expressionist
era and I feel like music is gonna go in that direction as well, which I am very,
very excited about. - I think definitely goes in that direction. I just heard the
new track from the data bots from CJ Car for the AI contest.
And if you haven't heard it, listeners, take a look at the new data bots song.
It's been out for two weeks, I think. It's, have you heard it? - I don't think so.
- Now it's a crazy piece of different styles just put together in three minutes. And
it's just all generated music and like, uh, it's, it's crazy. I just heard it,
uh, yesterday and I thought like, okay, yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's a
little bit data that I use them, just do the stuff and put it out there. But
before we talk about, you just mentioned already your project. We talk about this,
um, later. I just want to know a step, a little bit again, back to the point
where you just started using using AI tools. What did that do for you as a creator
that you were able to work with those tools? Did you feel kind of a freedom?
Did you feel kind of a new expression? Did you kind of feel of new creativity for
you? What exactly did it make you do? I think it's the fact that I'm almost
leaning into the fact that it's a black box, you know. So I come from a classical
background. I played piano for 18 years and did classical composition.
And so with classical music, if anybody's ever done conservatory programs,
you'll know there's very strict and rigid rules that you follow, and there's a very
specific way of doing things. So with my production, I've always been looking for
ways to break out of box and set of rules and so with AI it was sort of like to
me a Randomization feature, you know, I love hitting just the random button and
seeing what the computer comes up with and
Using AI was kind of like giving that randomization feature some guidelines To
constrict it a little bit and and be able to control a little bit more. So I
really did think that it's some kind of expression that I enjoyed using,
yeah. - That's really interesting, because I talked to a lot of classic people also
before and they always say, yes, it's hard for them. I remember I did a little
session with a Contrabass, Contrabass, what it's called, and we were asking her to
improvise. And she was like, I can't do this. Like, yeah,
we're just gonna jam a little bit. Can you just improvise a little bit? And she's
like, I can't do this. And we were like wondering why and now I understand because
after this, she told me and she told me exactly what you have told me that in the
classical world, everything has rules and everything is strict. But it's also
interesting that you come from a classical world, which is You make this huge step.
Well, no, it's not a huge step, actually. It is not a huge step. We always think
that it's a huge step, but it is not a huge step. It's actually kind of classical
world is really mathematically in order. Everything, every note has been, has been
thought of. So it was, it didn't feel for a huge step for you either. No, it was
easy. Yeah, I thought it's just the natural progression, you know, Okay.
And with all this in the background, what you've learned and where you've been
going, we just focused now on this project you've been talking about. Tell me a
little bit about what is this project? Maybe how did it start at first? How did
that idea come up? Sure. So for the last year, I've been working on an album
called Kunst kaputt, which means broken art if you speak German, and this project
came out of actually two years of something that I've been practicing called
beattober. So we're in October right now actually and I'm doing the third iteration
of beattober where I make a beat every single day of the month and it allows me
to kind of hone in on just focusing on production and practicing or trying out new
techniques every single day. So I took the beattober beats that I've been making for
the last two years and I started to iterate on them and eventually I knew that I
wanted to release a debut album. So this album kind of conceptualized when I was in
Berlin last year. Actually, even the name Kunstgeput comes from an experience that I
had where I fainted at the Gropius Bau Museum during Berlin Art Week.
It was really dramatic. I hit my head, I broke some art when I fainted.
- Which is art in itself. - Which is art, it's a performance art. And so I decided
to call it "Kunst Kaput" after what the security guard kept yelling at me. Okay.
And the word "kaput" by the way, is it in America also common? Do people use it?
Not really. Not really. Because I know it is in Quebec, in Canada. The people using
the word "kaput". Yes. So I thought maybe you know it also in the US, but you
don't. Because, you know, just a little story. The word kaputt comes from it's
broken and I heard in during a war I don't know which war the soldiers were
searching for the train station in Germany and and and they were always asking the
people like where's the train station and they always said kaputt it's broken that's
why the word came over to Canada that's the story I knew I don't know if it's
true but I like it it's a nice story kunst kaputt nice name I like it okay so
you take those beats and tell me a a little bit more what you do with them then
how do they end up finally as a song and what happens?
Yeah so I first made my own arrangements of the tracks so I have this kind of
master track but as I was looking more into AI technology I was also thinking a
lot about the music streaming economy because as we know like AI is,
a lot of people see it as a threat to traditional streaming or traditional ways of
distributing music because it, you can't really credit the artist as much anymore and
there's always the question around like, how do we get paid? How does anyone get
paid for their music? And so I wanted to incorporate more people into the
distribution process, especially like after we saw NFTs, which I was also a part of
that scene in '22.
And the way that people are able to collectively own art,
I was thinking about how could we collectively create an album together. And With
these AI tools, I was looking at particularly Trinity by Create Safe,
where they had this music studio that had all of their AI tools and you could put
in any song or any sample that you wanted and essentially generate a remix of that
track. So I said, "Okay, what if I took the stems from the album instead of just
releasing all of the tracks on Spotify or Bandcamp, I put them on this site and
then people can come to the site and every time they press play, it creates a
different remix, or they can even prompt it to create a different remix. On the
stems? On the stems, yeah. Which are the stems, which are those, like what beat,
what are the different stems? - There's all kinds, so there's like, usually I'll have
like a beat, there's like melody, there's chords, there's like textures. I'm a huge
like texture timbre person. So it's like taking all of the stems from the track and
creating this original remix, they could also add vocals to it. And essentially, I
wanna encourage people to collaborate with AI and merge their technical capabilities
with what is human aesthetic judgment to create these unique musical experiences and
people would be able to distribute and release the remix that they made and all of
these remixes compiled together become "kunskaput" the album.
Okay that's okay I'm okay I'm I'm trying to but I imagine now there are many
people who did this or did you just have have give access to a special amount of
people. Like, if everybody does the remix of a stem, how many people did take part?
As many as you want. Anybody can do it. That's kind of the point,
you know? I'm like gamifying it. And as we saw, so Grimes did something similar to
that with the Grimes vocal, the Grimes AI vocal, where she allowed anybody to put,
like, remixes of her voice, essentially. And people would make their own beats,
so I also did this. I released a song earlier this year called "I'm a Bad Bitch."
And it was me singing, and then I uploaded it to the site, and it turned it into
Grimes' voice, and then I put it back into the beat, and I released those tracks,
and we would basically co -author the track. Which is a good moment to listen to
that song. Yes. I am a bad bitch.
I'm the badass bitch I'm the badass bitch I'm the badass bitch I'm the badass bitch
I'm that sexy bitch Gupped in the cab and dont straight to the club No time for
pregame tch. I've already begun If ya want a night you might not survive But by
dus Virus, i'm a badass bitch I'm the badass bitch Im the badass phiiiitch Im the
badass bitch Im the badass bitch
What kind of music are they playing tonight? I hope it's got some groove, I've got
plenty of time Why are all these girls dressed up like mimes? Didn't someone tell
them it's after nine? I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch I'm the baddest
bitch, no phones on the dance floor I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch
I'm the baddest bitch, I'm that sexy bitch I know that you wanna dance with me But
How to move more easily Stop trying to put your arms around me You don't know how
to ask me, you don't know how to lead I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch
I'm the baddest bitch, do you know who this is? I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the
baddest bitch I'm the baddest bitch
I'm the baddest bitch. I'm the baddest bitch. I'm that slut.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the queenie
bitch I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm that
sexy bitch
I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the queenie
bitch I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm that
sexy bitch I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm
that crazy bitch I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest
bitch, I'm that sexy bitch I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the
baddest bitch, I'm that crazy bitch I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch,
I'm the baddest bitch, I'm that sexy bitch I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest
bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the good -
I'm that crazy bitch, I'm that baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm that sexy
bitch. I'm the baddest bitch, I'm the baddest bitch, I'm
I'm the baddest bitch. I'm the crazy bitch. I'm a bad bitch from Senaid drum and
bass badass You sick can I say it like this? Yeah Okay,
we'll take it like this um Let's let's let's talk about this again about this about
the project uh kunst kaputt It is not launched in the sense yet that you cannot
access this already. Is that true? When can you access this? And what is your plan
to, to, to, to launch to play? I thought when I heard it the first time,
it's kind of an album. I was, I'm so old. I think in albums, I thought like, Oh
my God, it's an album. It's 12 songs. No, it's, it is an album, but it doesn't,
it is an album that continuously changes a generative album, a generative album.
I didn't get this in the first part, so I'm sorry I'm excusing myself here, but
now I get it and it totally makes sense in the context of AI. So when will this
be launched and who can access it? You also mentioned it, but when will it be
launched? So we're going to be launching the site in end of December, January,
around New Year's, and you can look out for it by visiting kunstkaput .world it's a
website and if you go on there now actually you'll see the the landing page which
is inspired by this greek portara because i think we are the portara symbolizes like
a doorway or a gateway in which we are entering into the age of ai and so i want
this generative album to be both generated by AI as we were talking about earlier,
but also generated by humans. And that is the concept that I want people to
understand. - Okay, so it's a corporation, it's a duo. - Exactly. - AI and humans do
it together. - Yeah, and because we don't want AI to place music creators at the
end of the day, you know, back at our panel, we were talking about that a lot.
And the core of music expression is innately human. And so the only thing that AI
really affords us to do is to find this new way of expressing or sharing music and
not limit ourselves to the major streaming platforms that have really taken over the
music industry nowadays, which I completely don't support besides like Bandcamp and
SoundCloud.
Because as artists, we need to be taking back agency in how our music is providing
value and distributed and shared with the world. And so I really want to bring more
and more people into this process that you know anyone can make music and and we
can all share in its fruits of our labor. Just to let the listeners know we had a
panel together at the New Visions conference in the beginning of September and that's
where I met Schneider and I really wanted to talk with her about what she's doing
about her art and about her project. Yeah you can watch this the video of this
panel on the side of New Visions Berlin. If you search New Visions Berlin, you can
still find the panel. I don't know exactly the homepage, a name just search, search
New Visions Berlin, and you will find a really interesting panel. I really loved
discussing stuff with you like this. And it's interesting, you just mentioned this
ongoing generative process. This is something I hear so much artists who work with
Generally Fair Eye these days. We already talked about CJ from the data boards. They
have created an ongoing stream of heavy metal since, I don't know, how many months
or is it years already? It's really fascinating. - The longest streaming YouTube
video. - The longest streaming YouTube video. And I just talked to another guy who
was working on also an album who also says like, oh, I want to continuously create
music without stopping it and you just mentioned the same thing.
And I talked to a guy two years ago, I think his coding name was Nexus,
I have to look it up again, I didn't interview with him. And he also said, I
asked him like, "So you're creating Contest really in your virtual world music?" And
he said, "Yes." And I said "Will you publish that music one day?" I was like,
"Well, what do you mean? "It is published. "I'm just creating it all over and all
over again. "My generation likes to create all the time. "We don't have to put it
somewhere. "It's out there." Is that a feeling you can rely to as a generation that
maybe, I don't know, talking to generations that grows up with maybe computers and
games, I mean, I don't know, is that something? - For sure, you know, it's something
I think about a lot. So I'm Gen Z, I was born in 2002, you can do the math.
And for me, the internet has always been something that we essentially live on,
you know? One of my projects kind of adjacent to this album was exploring identity,
like online identities and how much of that is manifested in our core identities and
the more I explore web art and the concepts of sonic cyber feminism it really
brings me back to the fact that things online are impermanent and so I feel like
that's where the need to constantly generate comes from and to be able to have
something continually change and morph or even you can like edit it and replace it
and nothing is stuck in its form. And I think that really embodies what the
internet has become nowadays and thinking about how we can contextualize music,
art or any other medium in these new ecosystems is going to be what kind of
creates the catalyst for the future of art.
And do you have also, like, can we also maybe listen to one or two songs from,
or songs, do you call them songs, from the Kunskaput? Is there something you've
already tried? I know it's not public to experiment with, but is there thing we can
also play for the listeners already? Yes, yeah, so I was playing around with Trinity
and I created one of these remixes of the track, the fourth track on the album
called Curiosity and it came up with this really cool track.
It's a "Curiosity" by Schneider.
Is there a reason why it's called "Curus"? Is there a story behind it or is there
just its curiosity because it's curiosity? All the titles are kind of based on it's
kind of a story of like rebirth because I was also exploring the digital identity
so it's like imagining if I was a cyborg and this is like me rebirthing in the
online world and so each of the track titles basically tells the whole story of
this cyborg yeah what is your definition of a cyborg I know it's a difficult one
- Machine and human. - Okay, but so am I a cyborg if I have a pacemaker?
- Oh, we're all cyborgs. If you have a phone. - That's what I wanted to hear. Yeah,
that's what I wanted to hear. Of course, of course we're all already cyborgs.
Everybody is, I don't think maybe, maybe there are some people who try not to be
what in the end we're all. So talking about one more thing about working with AI
because we talk a lot about AI in this podcast. Do you think we will calm down in
the next 10 years? Like all this excitement, what's going on right now, because it's
a new technology. Everybody's talking about how great it is. Everybody's talking about
how dangerous it is. We have to discuss so many things about how to pay artists.
We have to discuss how we get some money out of the tech companies who get the
big money from the artist. What do you think and the excitement about how this is
so new and the discussion also if a music made by AI is real, there's so many
questions. What do you feel? How do you feel? Will it calm down and we'll be
getting so used to it? Well, Dennis, I think that is the biggest question of all.
I definitely don't think it's going away. You know, The technology is here, it's
here to stay. The way that it iterates and evolves will depend on both our physical
computing technologies and developments and also how we as a society,
as a government, as a people incorporate it into our daily lives. And so I think
this conversation should be had. I think it's an ongoing conversation, talking about
tech ethics, talking about human rights, how we can create policies that protect us,
both as people and as artists. And at the same time, I think that we're gonna also
see this bubble burst in the economy because we already kind of are seeing it.
what the technology is right now, it's still at its infant. It's like baby,
newborn baby stage. And so there's still a long way for it to go.
One of the things I'm looking at is quantum computing. I think that's the direction
we're going to look to next because without that technology,
we're not gonna be able to continue to advance the AI. And one of the most
exciting things that I'm going to be looking forward to is when all of the models
join together. So I'm hoping that'll happen, make it open source.
That's, that's the dream, you know. That's so interesting. I had also a discussion
about quantum, quantum computer music at the New Visions in Berlin.
And I was like, I was fascinated. But then I thought, you know, I'm me as a
journalist, I'm trying to explain people right now, what is AI? And then I thought
like, if I wouldn't right now, make a report for my German radio stations about
quantum computer music, they would tell me like, alright, Dennis, we're we're right
now, we have to understand AI. And you're already talking about quantum computer
music. It's, it's, it's, it's going really, really fast. But I know it's it's also
on the horizon. I know it's it's there. But yeah, but yeah, maybe we can't quite
imagine it yet because it's it's just happening now and it's unfolding before our
eyes. But I think that that means there's so much potential for what it could come.
But what does it do to music?
Who knows? We'll see in the next 30 years. - All right.
Thank you so much. We leave this episode with an open question, I think. That's a
good one. We'll see, or maybe I'll start a new podcast about quantum computer music
in one year, one month. Who knows? Thanks so much for talking to me.
That was really, really interesting. And we're gonna listen to one more song. You
have one more song for us to listen to, maybe? - This is "Princess of the Hills."
we're gonna be releasing this as the first kind of teaser single for this project
along with a music video that we made an unreal engine that I'm really really proud
of. So this is Prince of the Hills. Thank you so much Dennis, I really enjoyed
this. Thanks a lot, Shanaida. And Kunstkaputt's point, what was it, what was the web
page? We will link it in the liner notes. What is the name again? Dot World. Dot
world. That's a nice one. Thank you so much. Good luck and Yeah, we'll talk soon
with our quantum computer in in the background. We'll see. Thank you. Bye
That was the new episode of the Iliac Suite,
thanks Schneider for talking to me. Thank you for listening to this new episode,
all the information about the music and the artist I talked to,
you will find in the notes of this episode. Talk to You soon again, take care and
behave humans.
(upbeat music)