Three observations:
1. ai, ai, ai (artificial intelligence)
In films like Lukas Dhont’s multiple award-winning “Close” about a friendship between two boys that was too delicate for the socially hardened boys at school to tolerate, we see changes coming. Obvious, big. In real life, changes come with more subtle consequences that take time to manifest.
I didn’t write this last sentence, just edited it slightly, ChatGPT wrote it. For months we have been curiously playing online with artificial intelligence. Like kittens given a little tinfoil, we first rolled up the grossly pixelated images from the Dall E-Mini, made a Lensa AI selfie out of a number of photos, and then read “Sheila Hetis” in the “Paris Review” Hello World” – a five-part dialogue with Eliza the chat bot, naturally culminating in existential questions. The more experienced image generator Dall-E 2 is now available to us, and people have too many teeth on its sometimes frighteningly realistic images and don’t know what to do with their hands.
ChatGPT is the voice AI, like a search engine to chat with. She answers so pleasantly quickly that you no longer know why you should still ask friends, and she also admits mistakes. She bluntly writes boring lyrics on topics that have been discussed with her before. If you leave a thread, however, she won’t remember anything the next time you visit. Hey ChatGPT, name two novels that use the ideas of Jean Baudrillard!
2. “white noise” by don delillo, “the auction of no. 49” by thomas pynchon
When we last played around with something online that was new, without realizing how that “new” would change our everyday lives, the services were called Knuddels and Chatcity. We were intoxicated by being able to talk to strangers on computers. We never would have thought that communicating online with strangers – oh no, arguing! – would soon be the most ubiquitous thing.
Meanwhile, an AI-generated pixel sitcom is running on the Twitch streaming service. “Nothing, Forever” is made up of Seinfeld scripts, among other things. “Did you ever think that this could just be a joke?” Al-Elaine asked in it. “I mean, why are we here?” – “Well, to tell jokes, of course,” answered Al-George. This dialogue was translated from English, but not by me, but by DeepL – the world’s most precise translator. The laughing track starts late and tinny.
3. hail to the thief
AI exists because humans are copy beings. Something good new is always reminiscent of the good old, is only alienated in crucial places. Boygenius let themselves be photographed for their 2023 “Rolling Stone” cover like Nirvana in 1994. The harsh, blue pinstripe suits suit them, as does the facial expressions, the hair, everything looks like an original. Three female characters want to be congruent with the mostly male musical genius.
Back in 2018 they sat on their self-titled EP in the same formation on the couch as Crosby, Stills and Nash did on their debut. They could have called Boygenius’ debut, THE RECORD (2023), “The White Album”, “Beach Boys” or “In Rainbows”, they say in an interview. Whereby “In Rainbows” as the title would of course have been the nicest shift: from something old, read male, heterosexual to something read female, lesbian, by copy that seems original, but carries the copying process in itself.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 04/2023.