A transcript of a phone interview for the Czech magazine Seznam Zprávy in September 2022. Google translated the answers back to English, probably reads weird in places. Interview by Jonas Zboril.
"What will the world look like after all this." That's a sentence I found on your blog where you write about the inspirations for the new record Infinite Window . Is this an album about a dark future?
I guess I'm not really writing about the future. I am seriously interested in how we are now. Of course, the future somehow gets involved in this, as well as earlier ideas about the future.
My work is often described as science fiction. Actually, the comparison doesn't fit me anymore. Sure, I enjoy making dystopian, dark music, but I always feel like it's missing something. The albums Severant and Slow Knife were simply about what it's like to be alive, in relationships. Maybe it gets lost on those records because they don't have lyrics. Lyrics can make the human aspects of music visible. My music, on the other hand, can seem more abstract.
When I compose music, I think about personal things. In order for my music to resonate with the listener, I have to put myself into it, I have to put my life, a lot of personal experiences, memories and relationships into it. I think it's relationships and how we feel about others that I try to capture in my music.
So Infinite Window is about relationships? About everyday things?
No it is not. There are a few tracks where I think about my relationship with my partner, with my children and so on. Otherwise, everyday life is not the central theme of the new record. It's about the feeling of being at some sort of existential tipping point. Not just for us, but for the entire planet. That's what Infinite Window is about.
Do you remember when that tipping point occurred? I grew up in the nineties. Everyone told me, “You live in a wonderful world.” I wonder when that changed. The great historical turning point was perhaps September 11. But maybe that anxiety came simply the moment we became parents?
Yes, it could be that. This will definitely shift your perspective. But it's obviously something bigger too. We all feel the change. It's incredibly complicated. Many catastrophic vectors are concurring in the present, and all are extremely complex. Moreover, they somehow interact with each other.
I can't evaluate it clearly. But I think pop culture in general hit that tipping point in the last decade. The naivety of the zero years was gone. At least from today's perspective, the 2000s seem rather naive.
September 11th was certainly a pivotal moment. It disrupted our sense of security that we felt in the West. For a long time we thought we would be fine geopolitically. Security was not a topic we had to think about until then.
I think what's very interesting about this time after the millennium is how we've lost interest in the future. It can be seen in Hollywood productions as well as in music. Retro ruled.
But to get back to your question. I think the tipping point came in the 1990s. And now it seems that we are all thinking about the uncertain future.
What gives you hope? Is music a good tool to stay sane?
Of course. In this respect, I mainly use music as a listener. It gives me hope when I hear something beautiful. Music helped me a lot during the pandemic, for example. It kept me mentally and emotionally healthy. Which makes me think that maybe I should be more concerned with how my music makes people feel.
I can tell you what I experience when I listen to your music. I feel safe. When I hear your songs, I see a world that isn't exactly pretty, but at the same time I feel like I'm ready for it.
The cover of your new record Infinite Window may feature a wasteland, but we're looking at it from the inside. Something human remained. Likewise, your music remains emotional. That means someone is always watching. Someone still cares in the world.
I just saw that cover live for the first time. The vinyls arrived ten minutes ago.
What you say is very encouraging. I never wanted to portray the future or the present in a negative light. My music tends to have dark and sometimes aggressive moments, but it's not meant to be a statement about the state of the world.
I imagine a world in which a few people survived. If such a world underwent a radical change, but some people remained on it, our emotions would also be preserved. The positive experiences we have with each other. And if they don't behave? So we used to have them and that was beautiful.
Well, if the scenario of the future is post-humanistic and the world has been taken over by artificial life... then it is also a kind of life, and there is something comforting about it. After our story comes another story. Which we could in some way relate to.
In other words, beauty remains in each of those possible future scenarios.
And then there is actually one more option. That we can do it. That disaster won't come, that we'll more or less continue unscathed. Maybe it's still possible? I don't know.
As for the cover - originally there were people. That landscape is human. I wanted it to resemble a body. And then there are the columns. They suggest some human activity.
You mentioned artificial intelligence. I feel like this is a growing topic. After all, the Lunchmeat festival, at which you will perform on Thursday, also deals with it.
I definitely think about artificial intelligence often. But I never experimented with it much, it didn't seem productive. It's interesting when some concept of the future starts to materialize in the everyday world. This is because it often loses its potential for radical change. I think that happened with artificial intelligence as well.
In 2015, I released a record about artificial intelligence & cybernetics. I had high expectations then. Now artificial intelligence is really coming, and it doesn't seem nearly as exciting as I imagined years ago.
And what were your expectations? How did she disappoint you?
I think it is simply a tool for corporate use. That's trite. This does not mean that artificial intelligence therefore has no potential to create culture. It's still possible that AI will create something new, unknown, something we haven't thought of. Just the current manifestation through market forces, that's a bit boring.
And besides: art created by artificial intelligence hasn't yet evoked anything positive in me.
I feel that AI is a huge technological success, but the cultural output is not much yet. Not that artificial intelligence has to justify itself with art. There will definitely be people who will develop a deep relationship with artificial intelligence and will be able to create great art together. For now, it's more like flirting.
I think memes are a good way to spread the popularity of AI, increasing the potential for those deep relationships you talk about. I'm amused that the first thing AI people create are jokes.
But I also read about a writer who writes novels somewhat to order. She recently started working with an artificial intelligence that gives her plot advice and writes novels with her.
Yes, working with technologists is sometimes full of terribly menial tasks, slow, antsy work. Of course, AI can simply help humans by relieving them of such tasks.
But I'm still wondering why AI art doesn't do anything for me. It's not the product per se. The knowledge that there are no human hours of work behind it, that they did not put much of themselves into the crafting of it, probably prevents me from experiencing much from it.
I remember seeing dog images from Google Deep Dream. I felt like AI came alive. People still think that. The last time it occurred to the developers of Google, remember ?
I remember. I think artificial intelligence will eventually make us appreciate the human. I didn't realise until seeing AI art how much I cared that someone worked hard on the art, put themselves into it. I only found that out thanks to AI. I can imagine that people will train the AI so well that it becomes an image of their identity. I would really enjoy having a tool that knows me well enough to help me express myself better. But we're not that far yet.
There is no AI personhood yet, it's all atomized tools, but it does those separate tasks insanely well. Sometimes you can be overcome with existential anxiety when you see that artificial intelligence can do something perfectly that we thought only we could do. In such moments, the question arises: What does it actually mean to be human? I've always been very interested in that.
I've been thinking about this ever since I saw the Google Deep Dream images you talked about. They were very simple from today's point of view. I thought to myself anyway, “This is how dreams work!” Artificial intelligence has told us something about how we dream.
I didn't realize that your albums are actually quite similar. Somehow they sound inhuman, but that's why they say a lot about what it is to be human.
Yeah. The first album Severant is actually a breakup album. It was about what it's like to have a child while separating from its other parent. She was about the disappointment of not having the family you wanted. And there was also escapism present, running to sci-fi movies
Slow Knife was a lot about depression. About getting out of difficult psychological zones. It was still about relationships, because of course these conditions affect relationships. Again, science fiction and fantasy were also present.
I think Infinite Window is about that intense presence, that turning point when we wonder how much longer we'll be here as humanity. But it is also about the fantastic images that come to mind when we say: the distant future.
I always want my records to have something that is true and at the same time something that is pure fantasy. I like that combination. When it just feels like a figment of the imagination, it just lacks chemistry.
I think it works. If it doesn't work, I don't listen to your music.