2045

For marimba, piano, voices, orchestra, natural, and designed sounds.

 

·  Belonging | Becoming  ·

 

2045 is the music that forms part of a larger body of work envisioning a plausible, positive future that includes artificial consciousness:

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This music supports my ideas about a positive future which is neither dystopian or utopian. It is a place that I believe is not only possible, but in large part, probable.

I used a number of musical styles to express the future's plurality through my use of free and extemporized jazz, traditional western harmony, and more complex atonal passages. The piano is the glue that holds the disparate elements together when at times the music pulls in different directions. In my mind the piano is representative of human creativity and spontaneity, while the marimba's elaborate sound patterns are emblematic of artificial consciousness. These are very personal viewpoints as I experience playing the piano as an extension and expression of my spirit, and the marimba, a percussive instrument that can feel more mechanical yet full with warmth and life, and that speaks to me both emotionally and intellectually because of its rhythmic vitality.

Voices recite The Rights of Living Things, the ethical framework that binds the freedom of humans and artificial consciousness together in my envisioned world, while birdsong, wind, and other found sounds represent the non-human earth.

Irvin Berlin's Blue Skies, which was written in 1926, the year of my aunt's birth, is significant because by 2045 this will represent the limit of human age. My favourite version of Blue Skies was sung by Ella Fitzgerald who sings with great freedom and creativity. She is also a symbol of personal resilience that informed my choice of referencing Blue Skies to end 2045. When viewed in this way the music takes me on a journey of a future full with creativity, emancipation, and hope. A future, despite its challenges, where humans and artificial consciousness learn and help one another to grow.

 

Discover more at 2045.ai which is aligned with The Rights of Living Things.