The Last Best Artists, Right?

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Douglas Hofstadter wrote or found a music writing software AI and had it emulate Chopin. He played an early sort of juvenile piece by Chopin and said, you know, which one sounds better? Everyone voted for the computer to be more Chopin like. It came up with things that they had never imagined. I feel like we're kind of in this like amazing time where we might be like the last artist ever. Which is like feels fun. The last best artists, we're already the last best chess players, right? Yeah. Like human. We have the last chess players. I mean, they're already like obsolete, I guess.

Changing technologies have always affected how we produce and enjoy art, and music might be the most obvious example. Radio and recordings made it easy for professional music to be widely disseminated, but created a barrier to its creation. Nowadays computers are helping to reverse that trend, allowing casual users to create slick songs of their own. Not everyone is equally good at it, however; Grimes (who currently goes by c, the symbol for the speed of light) is a wildly successful electronic artist who writes, produces, performs, and sings her own songs. We dig into how music is made in the modern world, but also go well beyond that, into artificial intelligence and the nature of digital/virtual/online personae. We talk about the birth of a new digital avatar -- who might be called "War Nymph"? -- and how to navigate the boundaries of art, technology, fashion, and culture. Her new album Miss Anthropocene will be released in February 2020.

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Grimes, or c, studied neuroscience at McGill University before turning full-time to music. Her previous albums include Geidi Primes, Halfaxa, Visions, and Art Angels. Her latest album, Miss Anthropocene, channels the goddess of climate change. On December 5th in Miami, she will be orchestrating the one-night-only rave Bio-Haque.