Holly Herndon and Jlin unite on startling new song 'Godmother'.
The electronic artists combine to forge the new release, with the – entirely true, it seems – back story adding a further layer to the project.
The two seemingly are intent on building an ensemble in Berlin, utilising an entity known as Spawn.
Apparently derived from Spawn listening to the artworks of her godmother Jlin, 'Godmother' was "generated from silence with no samples, edits, or overdubs…"
Holly Herndon points out the moral implications of this creation…
"Are we to recoil from these developments, and place limitations on the ability for non-human entities like Spawn to witness things that we want to protect? Is permission-less mimicry the logical end point of a data-driven new musical ecosystem surgically tailored to give people more of what they like, with less and less emphasis on the provenance, or identity, of an idea?"
"Or is there a more beautiful, symbiotic, path of machine/human collaboration, owing to the legacies of pioneers like George Lewis, that view these developments as an opportunity to reconsider who we are, and dream up new ways of creating and organising accordingly."
"I find something hopeful about the roughness of this piece of music. Amidst a lot of misleading AI hype, it communicates something honest about the state of this technology; it is still a baby. It is important to be cautious that we are not raising a monster."
Tune in below.
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