Lyrics, music and visuals: Eric Schuurman
Tenor Sax: Vince Salerno
The song alludes to outliving people who were once in your life. It began as a piano finger exercise to a groove that was interesting me. Then words started suggesting themselves, it took form as a song, and I recorded it in Logic. During that, there was a major Logic upgrade and my buffer settings were set back to default without my knowledge, causing some little pops in the vocal track. I liked the vocal track, so I learned to like the pops.
I imagined the visual elements for this without any clear reasons other than thinking the combinations might look cool. I came very close to nailing my original visualization. Now that it’s done, I can lean back, and as any other viewer, mull the possible meaning of the words and images.
I used the Kaiber Flipbook format for the generative AI animation. All the quirky, odd AI warts and idiosyncrasies are in there. At the start there is a solitary person standing under the sun in the desert. A train, maybe meaning existence, arrives with passengers in a car. They travel together for a while. At the end, the solitary person is there again, standing in the desert as the sun sets. Maybe the cycle of a life.
I think the structure at the frame periphery has something to do with civilization. It surrounds the scene, and to one extent or another is always there in unpredictable motion, constantly shifting. It has a rigid and cold appearance. It was created with the 3D fractal program Mandelbulber.
I had ChatGPT generate Processing language scripts for creative coding elements. There are grayscale faces that appear. They undulate and move in 3D space, some more readily visible than others. Some look like flocking birds. I think they’re the people in our lives that we were close to.
Using the cloth and wind physics simulations in Blender 3D, I had ChatGPT generate Python scripts that sent puffs of blue and red gingham fabric out into the world, disappearing beyond the horizon. Probably has something to do with the brief, transitory nature of life.
Everything was composited together in Blender: music, generative AI, creative coding, 3D fractal, and 3D simulations. ChatGPT generated Python and Processing scripts, and was used extensively in de-bugging and trouble-shooting production. The animation was encoded using Compressor.
