Bi-Weekly-ish newsletter #41: w/ Kendrick Lamar's 👑 Grand Prix🏎️ , Clippy📎📎, Ai Rap,🎤 VR and Music🕶️🎵.
Hello there,
I hope this email finds you well.
Considering the number of people on this list working in the broader advertising industry, this mail might find you waiting at Nice airport for a delayed flight on your way home after attending this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (aka the world cup/spring break for advertising people). Anyhow, you should have plenty of time to dig into this edition of the bi-weekly-ish newsletter by your truly, Marcel Alexander Wiebenga.
This edition has a Cannes Lions Grand Prix winner I completely missed when it came out, Microsoft and their DeepRapper AI, a Forbes piece on VR and the future of music that I didn't really like, and a Wunderman Thompson's future of music piece that I did really like.
Enjoy!
1. A Triumph of Artistic Fusion
Kendrick Lamar’s “We Cry Together" Wins Cannes Lions Grand Prix
“We Cry Together” is a short film featuring Kendrick Lamar and ‘Zola’ star Taylour Paige that just won a Cannes Lions Grand Prix in the Film Craft category. The work, dare I say Gesamtkunstwerk, blurs the lines between music, theatre, and poetry, and even though this is right in my proverbial alley, I completely missed this when it came out nine months ago.
The video depicts an argument between two people in a relationship where brutal honesty, real talk, and incredible dynamism turn into an eventual reconciliation 👉👌.
Both as a work and in terms of thematics, it is almost impossible not to be reminded of both Taylor Swift’s - “All Too Well” short film and R-Kelly’s - “Trapped in the Closet”, but intelligent and luckily without all the despicable elements of the latter main character.
This is a must-watch for those who missed it when it was first released.
2. The Unforgettable Clippy
Meet The Maker of the Nostalgic AI Icon
I decided to skip the Cannes Lions this year to focus on other things - more on that in the next edition. Still, constant updates on Instagram simultaneously gave the feeling I'm there and sparked ginormous amounts of party FOMO. Quite unsurprisingly, the hot-button issue this year is AI. How amazing/stupid it all is and how it will change everything/nothing at all.
Even though it's been around in various clunky shapes and forms since forever, AI has taken off in the public discourse of an industry that has ignored it for the longest time. It reminded me of a video I saw a while ago featuring an interview with the designer of the OG virtual AI-ish assistant we all came to love/hate… Microsoft's Clippy.
Clippy became a feature on millions of computers in the 1990s. As Microsoft Office 97's default assistant, the paperclip character offered helpful suggestions and tips to users. However, not everyone appreciated Clippy's presence due to his ever-watchful gaze, shape-shifting animations and lack of an off-button that caused, to put it mildly, mixed reactions.
Clippy now possesses both a nostalgic and pop-cultural iconic charm; he reminds people of a simpler time in technology and is an excellent reminder of how clunky Microsofts UX/UI designs have been and, for anyone with a Mac forced to video-meet on Teams, continues to be. Meet the Clippy creater below!
3. Microsoft's Rapping Coolness Quotient
DeepRapper and Muzic Aim to Redefine AI Music Research
Speaking of Microsoft - the company that oozes coolness and not only gave you Clippy but also this iconic pop culture moment during the launch of Windows 95. THAT Microsoft is developing an AI rap generator called DeepRapper. What is worse… it apparently is really good.
DeepRapper is trained on a large dataset of rap songs crawled from the web and is designed to generate both rhymes and rhythms. The researchers also developed a data mining pipeline that continuously collects new rap datasets. In addition to DeepRapper, Another Microsoft AI music research project, Muzic, creates singing voice synthesis and lyric generation.
If you want to dive into the nitty gritty and get confused, as some of the information is in Chinese, this Github showcases its inner workings.
The video below is from yet another Microsoft-endorsed Rap project called Rap Vs. Ai and showcases three human rappers rap battling the machine and is an exciting demonstration of where the technology currently stands.
4. VR in Music
Some Doubts on Apple Vision Pro's Potential for Music
In the previous bi-weekly-ish newsletter, I expressed my doubts about VR and the recently announced Apple Vision Pro headset. Although it's generally unwise to bet against Apple, as they have a history of entering a product category at just the right time and dominating it, I am still skeptical about its functionality.
I was sent an article by a few people last week that was published by Forbes. The article claims that the Vision Pro has the potential to revolutionize the music industry. The article does make some decent points, but I stand by my initial skepticism and double down by stating that many cases in the article are unfounded.
The article starts with the concept of Immersive Concert Experiences and states, "Imagine attending a live concert from the comfort of your own home, yet feeling as if you were front-row center in the venue. With the Apple Vision Pro, this becomes a reality." This is a nonsense comparison. The comfort of your own home is, by definition, different from being front-row. It might sound paradoxical, but uncomfortable elements, mixed with the feeling of experiencing something unique and exclusive to the moment and place, make a concert experience a worthwhile experience.
The "Immersive Concert Experience" described is more comparable to live registrations on different media formats like CDs or TV. All of them are great, but something other than the promise of the real thing.
Furthermore, the author discusses the concept of Interactive Music Education. Global music teachers can tailor lessons to meet individual needs and allow students to visualize complex music theory concepts, learn instruments through virtual teachers, and practice in simulated real-world performance settings to get over-stage fright, once again "all without leaving their living room."
Learning complex music theory concepts demands determination, time, talent, grit, and perseverance, not better toys with more giant screens. Similarly, getting over stage fright without leaving your living room is a contradictio in terminis, and a false promise.
The Apple Vision Pro will have advantages in music creation and consumption, but the article demonstrates a lack of understanding of some of the accompanying processes of what VR can be in the musical realm, other than a novelty.
Read the article here, explain why I am wrong in the comments or email me.
5. The Future of Sound
Wellness, Discovery, and Fandomonium
I came across a report that I did like called the "Future of Sound" by Wunderman Thompson in partnership with Spotify Advertising. The report delves into the potential of music and sound in the future, highlighting how it can empower and unite people. It also stresses the importance of brands exploring and integrating these possibilities, quite conveniently something my company Howl helps brands with.
The report is quite lengthy but here's the TLDR;
🎵 Fandomonium: NFT and Web3 development will see fans and musicians collaborate more, with fans becoming co-creators and investors.
🎮 The Gaming Engine: Gaming and music continue to create an enormous cultural and economic phenomenon.
🔍 Sonic Serendipity: The development of new music discovery platforms empowers listeners and promotes diversity.
👁️🗨️ Audio accessibility: Audio enhancing lives for visually impaired.
📖 Responsive audio content: Contextual storytelling delivers personalized content.
🔊 Sonic Brand Futures: Strong, easily identifiable, multi-channel brand sounds are increasingly becoming paramount.
🎨 Visual Vibrations: AI will rapidly add increasingly more visual and haptic elements to music.
🌱 The Musical Footprint: Environmental sustainability is expected in music consumption.
🎶 Audio Health: The application of sound is becoming a powerful new wellness solution targeting sleep, emotional state, and even physical symptoms.
💑 Audio Erotica: Sound and sexual well-being are merging.
🏙️ Architeculral Soundscapes: Architects and urban planners are focusing on integrating sound as part of the designs as startups specializing in immersive sound will flourish.
Here's the whole document if you're up for some in-depth reading.
Thats it for this edition.
Enjoy your Saturday!
Marcel
Always interesting , great topics as usual. Thanks for all this!