Bi-Weekly-ish Newsletter #49 w/ Sevdaliza’s Digital Artistry 🎵🤖, Kurzgesagt’s Time Odyssey 🌍⏱, Riehl & Rubin’s Melody Manifesto 🎶📜, Eno's Creative Insights 🎧🎨, OpenAI's Leadership Drama 🤖💼
Hey reader,
Rolling out another edition of the bi-weekly-ish newsletter!
Harmonies hug AI's horizon,
Imagery ignites in cyber glow,
Art's new dawn awaits
Enjoy!
1. Sevdaliza Nothing Lasts Forever
Virtually Vivid Visions & Digital Deep Fake Divas
Iranian-Dutch singer-songwriter and record producer Sevdaliza once again pushes the boundaries of music and visual art with her latest video, "Nothing Lasts Forever," featuring ☘︎𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰࿎.
Directed by Willemskantine, the video is a groundbreaking spectacle as it includes, to my understanding, legal deep fake appearances from some of the biggest names in showbizzzz, including Grimes, ASAP Ferg, Julia Fox, and Madonna.
Willemskantine and Sevdaliza have masterfully used technology, often seen as a weapon against artists, in a singular, harmonious vision that goes beyond mere aesthetics but delves into the fluidity of identity in a new digital era.
Perfection pursued, viewed through a pop culture lens with and a dash of dystopian flair.
2. Kurzgesagt's Ultimate Time Lapse
Billions of Years and Breathtaking Beats
If you're like me and find a certain zen in time lapses, like this, this and this, do I have a treat for you!
Kurzgesagt: In a Nutshell, the German animation and design powerhouse known for its brilliantly minimalistic and educational YouTube content, has outdone itself. Celebrating a decade of distilling complex subjects into digestible, visually stunning video pieces, they've embarked on their most ambitious project yet: the ultimate time-lapse, Earth's 4.5 billion-year history.
Every second of this animated masterpiece represents a million years of Earth's evolution, cleverly scored as a musical train ride through time, in an experience that somewhat creates the perception of what the unperceivable concept of a billion years entails.
Self-described as the perfect party background, a study break par excellence, and a fascinating travel companion, this time-lapse lives up to every bit of that self-description.
Immerse yourself in the audio-visual grandeur of Earth's history below.
3. Riehl & Rubin's 68B Melodies
Musical Mathematics and Copyright Conundrums
At last week's Most Wanted Music event in Berlin, a discussion about AI's impact on music creation and its potential constraints due to copyright issues reminded me of a fascinating project from a few years back by lawyer and coder duo Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin.
The due ambitiously created nearly 68 billion melodies using MIDI technology and AI, encompassing the entire note range of popular Western music. They released all these melodies under a Creative Commons Zero license, thus bringing all 68 billion melodies into the public domain, making it impossible, or at least harder, for patent and copyright trolls to abuse and limit creative expression.
I love how Riehl and Rubin's project challenges the idea of copyrighting melodies, suggesting they are pre-existing mathematical sequences and, therefore, non-copyrightable, as their work provides a thought-provoking perspective on the creative and legal intricacies of music production in the AI age bleep-bloop.
Check out their TED talk below if you're still reading this and haven't fallen asleep.
4. Brian Eno's 11 Creative Lessons
Decoding the DNA of Cr-ENO-tivity
I genuinely love this newsletter by a certain Trung Phan, who writes a perfect "Saturday email on the latest in tech, business, and memes." kinda like what you're reading now, but way more consistent. In his latest edition, he focuses on the 11 creative lessons from music legend Brian Eno, and who am I not to reshare that?
Brian Eno, renowned for his work with artists like U2 (gross!) and David Bowie, also notably created the Windows 95 startup sound, an assignment from Microsoft requiring a piece that was "inspiring, universal, futuristic, sentimental, emotional...and only 3.25 seconds long." Eno apparently produced 84 versions and was paid $35k (which seems like a steal for Microsoft).
More importantly, the project helped him overcome a creative block, making him sensitive to microseconds and influencing his more extended compositions. This and 11 additional Creative Lessons from Brian Eno from over 10 hours of interviews with Eno like:
• What is art actually for?
• How to stay in creative mode
• Music and the nervous system
• Control vs. surrender
• Scenius: group genius
• Software gives too many options
• Beginnings are easy; endings are hard
• The importance of deadlines
• Rawness vs. polish
• The anchor of success
• "Don't get a job"
It's a superb post in a fabulous newsletter by a unique Twitter/X poster called Trung T. Phan, who I suggest you follow.
5. OpenAI's Turbulent Weekend
AI Aspirations, Boardroom Battles and Corporate Coups
Disclaimer: seeing how the story unfolds as I write this, everything I write here might be moot by the time you read it.
Last weekend, in an epic, soon-to-be HBO mini-drama series, the Open AI board, backed by co-founder head scientist Ilya Sutskever, fired CEO Sam Altman, only for that same Sam Altman to rally up the coding and scientist troops, and through a Machiavellian judo move, fire the board and return as CEO.
People have been asking me what has happened, and even though I take it as a compliment that people think I have insights into what perspires in companies like this, I don't know more than what I can gather from the Twitter/X-sphere.
The mission of OpenAi is to ensure that AGI (artificial general intelligence), AI systems that are generally smarter than humans, benefit all of humanity. Therefore, OpenAi is, or at least started, as a not-for-profit organization, and this might be where the proverbial shoe pinches.
Seeing as the most apparent explanation is often the right one. It is most likely that Altman wanted to change strategic direction into a more commercialized direction, letting go of the company's original humanitarian mission that head scientist and CEO/king slayer Ilya Sutskever was defending.
The funnier, more sensationalist, and way better for the HBO script, explanation is well-worded by Twitter user @LinusEkenstam.
The speculation that OpenAI secretly harbors advanced AGI technology has been making the rounds. It’s said that Ilya Sutskever, among the first to realize the full extent of what they've created, might have had his Frankenstein moment, exclaiming, 'It's alive, alive!' This realization, however, is tinged with apprehension about the potential misuse of such powerful technology. The Guardian interview with Sutskever below sheds light on the immense pressure and moral responsibility he feels.
This whole episode shows what an insane time we are living in and how big the philosophical questions are around the corner. Like... why do these people all tweet without correct capitalization, and is Sama really the good guy in this story?
Thanks a ton for sticking with me to the end! If you enjoyed the read, feel free to smash that like button or even better, share this with a friend who'd appreciate it.
On another exciting note, we're inching closer to the soft launch of our first-ever version of Ringo – the platform revolutionizing sync licensing to make it safe, simple, and stress-free. You can track our progress and join our journey (apologies for that cliché) on LinkedIn.
And with that said,
You're only young once
So do it right!
Enjoy your weekend!
Marcel