Do You Wish to Continue?
Synthographic AI-generated song, invocations of the sea, and hypermarket eternity
Premiered Aug 6, 20231
“Do You Wish to Continue?” (Sam Lou Talbot, 2023c) is track 19 off my new album Space Junk (Sam Lou Talbot, 2023b). The video was produced in collaboration with The Department of Entertainment via Midjourney in beta.
Midjourney claims to expand new modes of thought and visual expression through generative AI, which is debatable. We explored this avenue to comingle spontaneous song with AI-generative visuals.
Music composed, performed and produced by Sam Lou Talbot (feat. sounds from freesound.org (CC0 License). Video by ‘The Department of Entertainment’, aka Damien Walter.
Methodological notes.
This track is inspired by my experience of walking through the self-checkout tills at my local supermarket and being greeted by the robotic voice: “Do you wish to continue?”
I took my phone out and recorded this address not knowing what I would do with it. I later imported the track into Logic to begin composing the track. My initial real-time vocalisations were of me repeating and echoing the question.
I then experimented with delay to wrap my voice around the robot’s, incorporating nomadic sounds off Freesound. The AI-generated primal sea scape evokes a sense of being transported elsewhere, beyond the supermarket. However, as the video progresses, the loop, which was generated by prompts, brings us back to an anonymous, and apparently eternal, hypermarket.
The foghorns sourced off the East Coast of the US infused the track with the interplay between distance and proximity I was aiming for. Feedback from listeners suggests it is “close, yet restless”, effectively “capturing a sense of modern-day alienation”.
At the time of making this video, I was considering experimenting with a visual format for Space Junk by producing it as a three-hour ASMR type release on YouTube to reach new audiences. However, after experimenting with several videos, none of the others were as affective and besides, I have a strong distaste for AI-generated imagery.
This video sits in opposition to being experienced on a tiny phone screen though. It would have been far better to have exhibited it in a gallery space with immersive sound. Exhibiting it thus was not possible within the timeframe of the project though. Moreover, one of the complications of publishing music online is that we have no control over how it is experienced, or on what gear. Streaming our music via tinny inner ear headphones via an MP3 on a crowded street may just be how our music is experienced by the majority of listeners undoing all our attention to mixing and mastering.
I discussed the ethical aspects of field recording in ‘corporate air’ with my supervisors corporate air, which isn’t an issue, as this is a robotic voice, yet in the mixing stage, I cut the name of the supermarket out as we agreed it leant the track “too much reality”.
The revised mix was more ambiguous, with no geographical or corporate references. This mirrored the generic hypermarket visualised in the Synthographic video which seems to be both everywhere, and nowhere. I urge you to stick with the panning to the end.
*I will be screening this video on Wednesday 15th May at the University of Glasgow, as part of a research symposium, followed by a Q&A.
In contrast, last night I played the track Dream Catcher to a group of fellow PGRs and artists in an informal sharing session in a friend’s kitchen. The experience of having five people sat around a table with me listening intently and absorbing it like that was quite special yet also made me uncomfortable. I talk about the methods and intention behind this track in “That Night in Hawaii When I turned into a Panther…”
Again, this track could be more effectively experienced via bass speakers perhaps with the audience seated in a circle around it.
J. asked a question on the drone which runs through the track. His point was that he felt the whole point of the track was that it emerged through the drone. I had a comparable sensation when mixing the track Object Voice2 (Talbot, 2023e) the final bounce of which was exported on the rooftop gallery of the new James McCune building in a rain storm and it felt transcendent as the drone came to a close, and the sun then came out.
Some notes on Space Junk.
Space Junk is defunct, ever-proliferating man-made debris hurtling principally in Earth orbit. It is thus a convenient analogy for an album on the paraphernalia of everyday life under late-stage capitalism, cloud capital, or Technofeudalism. It is also the title of my third album: the 34 track, five-piece, three-hour cosmic magnum opus of electric guitar-driven spontaneous songs, sounds, samples, field recordings, and spoken word. The more abstract and atmospheric pieces encapsulate a disembodied sense of floating in space. The lyrical themes traverse desire and consumption, modern-day alienation, atomisation, isolation and the commodification of everything, whilst touching upon more existential/spiritual themes.
Sam Lou Talbot. 2023c. Do you wish to continue? [Online]. [Accessed 6 August 2023]. Available from: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hJODpjAalfw
Talbot, S.L. 2023e. Object voice. Sam Lou Talbot. Space junk. [Online]. Glasgow: Sam Lou Talbot. [Accessed 17 December 2023]. Available from: https://www.samloutalbot.bandcamp.com/track/object-voice