11
votes
Peter Gabriel on synthesizers as a "dream machine" (1983)
Link information
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- Title
- 1983: The SYNTHESIZER - a BLESSING or a CURSE? | RPM | Classic BBC Music | BBC Archive
- Authors
- BBC Archive
- Duration
- 8:07
- Published
- May 5 2025
Transcript of the interesting section:
BBC: What you're saying is then that it's put much more emphasis upon the imagination rather than technical ability.
PG: Yeah. I think that the thoughts and the ideas are becoming much more critical than the technique, which is to say also that the technique will never be superseded. I mean someone's long-term relationship with an instrument will produce a type of performance and personality that you will not reproduce with any amount of computers, synthesizers, whatever. But the juice, the meat of the sounds of those things will become accessible to virtually anyone who really wants access.
This is apples to oranges, IMO. The issue is that most wannabe artists aren’t just using gen AI to supplement their technique, or to foster their creativity. Rather, they’re attempting to use it as a whole-cloth replacement for any sort of legitimate study or practice in the first place. AI art without a solid foundation of the craft is reductive, insubstantial, and hollow, and it can’t possibly be anything else.
I’ve outlined my thoughts on this in the past so I won’t go into much further detail with those rehashed thoughts.
I’ll close by saying that I’m a classically trained musician who makes a living as a software engineer, and I find the arguments for (or against) AI within these two fields to be endlessly, fascinatingly, frustratingly at odds with each other. On one side, engineers are usually pretty good about seeing AI for what it really is (IMO) when it comes to its role in their own job. It’s a tool, a potentially very effective one, but it’s not going to replace them. But then in that same breath, some of these folks turn around and say, “oh, but AI art is just the way of the future, either get with it or get left in the dust.” Which one is it?! Is AI this insurmountable force that will level the playing field between any and all disciplines, or is it just a powerful tool that hones and sharpens that which has already been cultivated through other means? I know which side of that I believe.
Ninja edit: in case it’s not clear, I embrace the usage of AI in art to an extent, just like I embrace the usage of computers/synthesizers in music to an extent. But surely we can all tell the difference between an established electronic artist making legitimate music and somebody who walks up to a Casio and hits “play” on a preprogrammed song, right?
Yeah to me the one thing that constantly gets lost in the comparisons between generative AI and actual creativity-fostering tools is this exact thing- that generative AI produces 'complete works' with the human being essentially unnecessary in the process aside from a prompt, and to me, a prompt is a commission, and people are just commissioning bots now instead of real artists, or instead of learning skills themselves.
And at least in some cases in history where workers fought against tools that were meant to replace them in hostile ways (Luddites for instance), they were right to do so IMO.
I won't expound on this deeply, because yeah, I've done this numerous times in the past and my aggressively anti-generative-AI (and even some other forms of AI) stance is detailed enough in other places / prior posts. (Edit: well, I suppose I did anyway... I can't help it!)
But like, even when it comes to synthesizers and computers for making music- even in their most automated form (like VSTs I use to create ambient music and such)- still require human skill (composition, music skills, etc) to create something actually worthwhile. I could just hit a key, record a minute or two, and stop, and put that out as an ambient track- but that just equates to any other extremely low-effort art, and is really not what musicians are doing. Good ambient/synth music still has a lot of human soul in it. Just watch any number of producers/composers/musicians on YT who help people learn synths and review synths and such- they're putting a lot into their art, they aren't just asking a computer for a full song and hitting "send".
And speaking of "low-effort" art- even though I don't really consider generative AI art "art", it's really that at scale- automate away the human expression and effort as much as possible, at a scale never scene before, in a way that isn't even it's own new art medium (like photography was), but instead, is just a bad simulacra of existing ones that requires absolutely zero skill or real input
Did some portrait artists lose work due to the threat of photography? Maybe... maybe not and those that did, whether or not we agree anything should have been done to stop it, had every right to feel frustrated or scared that their livelihood might be in danger. But many embraced it as a new medium they could work in. I don't feel this parallel with AI (even though the article mentions that), because it isn't its own medium, it's simply a bad mimic that has nowhere to go, there is no new 'format' for to exist in, it just devours humanity out of the existing ones
Generative works will always be to me "soulless commissions". Those using generative art would be better-served by using public domain art or otherwise to pair with whatever projects they're doing- at least then the humanity is retained and respected in some way- commissioning the history of human expression, in a way.
Hear, hear. You’ve framed a lot of how I feel much more eloquently than I’ve been able to accomplish in far fewer words; thanks for that.
Your penultimate paragraph about replacing human effort at scale is one of things that scares me the most about this all, per my link in my first comment above. Quantitatively, artists simply cannot keep up with the deluge of slop in the long run without intervention, and I fear that if we as a society aren’t good stewards of art, we’re one day simply going to be suffocated by the mediocre noise.
I agree with the fear you outline here, my only word of hope would be that I think real artists, musicians, etc will still stand out, kind of the way real emails still stand out amongst a sea of SPAM. There will be something that pokes through. Sure, as the system improves, if it does, we may get duped. The signal gets harder to find in the noise, but is still there. That doesn't mean we won't despair at how few care to look for it, though (and I very well could be wrong). So my hopeful statement turned despairful anyway, sorry :)
Thanks for sharing the link to your earlier thoughts. And I think they cover your Casio scenario when they say "someone's long-term relationship with an instrument will produce a type of performance and personality that you will not reproduce with any amount of computers, synthesizers, whatever."
I agree the we can tell the difference and usually the one with more experience will be higher quality and succeed. Jony Ive talks about our ability to sense carelessness (and, thus, opposingly: care) in the interview he did this week, which I would say is the same thing.
This is an astonishing conversion, even in this obviously heavily edited form. The topic is ever present: at exactly the same time in 1983 artists/illustrators like Barbara Nessim were facing backlash and resistance for their use of computers as a new tool to do their work, an opinion which lasted for a decade until the early-mid 1990s. And here we are in the 2020s having the same discussion about machine learning/LLMs or "A.I." if you want to call it that. It's the relentless march of progress and people's resistance to change. Progress always seems to win.
Another case, the mobs of tailors destroying Sewing machines in 1850.