At risk of sounding like I am a broken record myself, I am still pondering the idea of what makes a form of artistic expression (music, writing, etc.) “unique” as opposed to “derivative”.
I make it no secret that I employ AI for exploring ideas, philosophy and personal education (i.e., “How do I construct a coldwave synth pad on my Hydrasynth? What wave types on my three oscillators, envelope and LFO settings would help me get that sweeping ‘icy’ sound?” or “Explain to me the Sámi cosmologic worldview as currently understood and correcting for Christian bias in the written records. Point out the suspect areas and provide scholarly references for further review. Do not rely on information gathered from unsupported or unreferenced statements.”
Things like that. AI is really good at collecting information quickly and doing a darned fine job of filtering it when you give the right instructions. Plus, no ads.
Anyway, Claude really likes to humble me (I’ve trained it to not spare my feelings during more serious discussions and explorations). I, of course, did not hesitate to ask my queries to explore what the current theories were on the matter.
From a discussion with Claude. Emphasis is mine:
Which is why […] aiming at novelty is self-defeating. “What hasn’t been done” is a question about other people’s map; navigating by it guarantees you stay on it. The people who made the disruptive things were mostly trying to make a specific thing they couldn’t stop thinking about, with insufficient means, and the newness was a byproduct of the mismatch. Obsession plus constraint plus not knowing what you’re not allowed to do.
I think that the italicized portion gets at the guts of the matter. Disruption comes from trying to do something that isn’t necessarily different, but is approached differently due to some kind of constraint. Lack of proper or available tools, lack of education, lack of skill…
I always said that what made punk and post-punk music what it was is that some kids wanted to make music, often with crappy instruments and no idea what was allowed or disallowed, and just banged stuff out until it sounded the way they thought it should sound (regardless of what the rest of the world thought). Skills and good instruments followed, but nearly every band from that era started with nearly zero and decided to get a band together because, well if those guys can get away with it, why not us?
Just some more grist for the mill.
Beat me up.
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