-Neil Theise, “Notes on Complexity"

There’s a lot of handwringing these days from creative types about what separates humans from AI. To me it is that machines (while highly complicated) are fixed processes while humans adaptively evolve.

Lately I’ve been fascinated by the way natural systems adapt. Complexity Science emerged in the 1980’s to explain how fabrics of individually operating elements come together to collectively adapt to change. The idea of “more than the sum of it’s parts” has far reaching implications in the way we view ourselves in relation to culture, and I suggest that in our battle against AI for the artistic soul of humanity, we embrace the concepts of complexity.

How does complexity operate?

The clearest example is Natural Selection. If life is to adapt, it requires a steady supply of random mutation to hedge against environmental change. Complexity science calls this imbued randomness in a system Quenched Disorder.

In any environment, mutations are selected by their necessity. The illustration below is how this looks across a large population. It is best expressed as a field or landscape. The peaks represent positive harmony with environment, the valleys represent extinction.

https://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/wright.pdf

Since the environment that determines this landscape is constantly changing, a single pool of genes will not always stay positive if it stays in one place. If the system is to survive, it requires mutation and cross breeding. That way, a race of organisms can navigate across the shifting landscape. Thus group survival requires some hedging.

There’s a lot of deep peer reviewed research on probability of survival in with regards to inbreeding vs. mutation, but the main point is that the randomness of mutation (ie. quenched disorder) is the key to an organism’s survivability. Without this force, genes would pass on carbon copies of themselves, and the organism will fail under the weight of its own rigidity.

What does this have to do with AI vs. Humans?

It has to do with Feedback Loops.

Any sustainable process is called a Feedback Loop. You cool ice to 32 degrees—it becomes ice. You put bread in the toaster—it toasts. You practice—you get better. You encourage a young musician, they stick with it. You give an artist money—they continue making the same thing. These are all feedback loops.

Fixed, unregulated feedback loops stagnate in the face of change and can be dangerous. Think of financial markets/bubbles, media narratives and authoritarianism. It’s helpful to any artist to study the emergence of cultural and political movements, examine our social lives, how we treat our bodies, etc. in terms of feedback loops. The bottom line is that to survive, the loops have to be regulated with disorder.

Machines, as complex as they are, have predictable input-output processes whereas humans have the natural gift of being able to manipulate and adjust our feedback loops to shape the course of our lives. These adjustments happen when we counter our feedback processes with quenched disorder.

We can adjust our Biology with medicine, we can adjust our minds with Psychology, Spirituality, and drugs. And—importantly—we can CHOOSE A DIRECTION FOR OUR ART.

John Cage and many Post-modern mid century artists demonstrated a bold choice in their work in which they sought to detach art from its formalistic institutional patterns. Cage rejected Stravinski and Prokofiev as grandiose functions of a stagnant Beethoven-rooted authority. Basically saying “there are no more novel ideas in the old framework in music” was very controversial. Stripping away the language and meaning of formal art in favor of the goal of making your own random sort of way was like a bomb of QUENCHED DISORDER thrown into a stagnant feedback loop. It was a revolution that informed and inspired future generations of musicians who experimented and collaborated make their own path…from the Beatles, Hendrix, Wendy Carlos, Brian Eno, Skrillex…etc. We take this for granted now, but it was a pretty novel idea in the mid 1900’s.

But Cage had a blind spot. Randomness and Anti-aesthetic was only significant because the attitude was embraced by OTHER PEOPLE. Intrinsically, his experimental-chance music was not where its value lay. It’s value was in the distribution of his concept.

In Philip Galanter’s article Systems in Art Making and Art Theory: Complex Networks from the Ashes of Postmodernism, he shows the ways in which complexity completes Cage’s revolution against Institutional Formalism.

The whole article is here and a worthy deep dive on art as it relates to Complexity. https://median.newmediacaucus.org/caa-edition/systems-in-art-making-and-art-theory-complex-networks-from-the-ashes-of-postmodernism/

Back to the topic at hand…

AI is an ENTIRELY FIXED, FORMAL SYSTEM. It looks to the past and assembles and combines. It can’t mimic something it hasn’t been trained on. As human musicians, we have the ability to choose, like John Cage, to COMPLETELY REJECT formalism when we see fit. But…the complexity caveat is that we must make ourselves connectable to survive.

To do this in our careers as musicians, look no further than nature itself. Successful individuals that thrive in a system (tree roots, single fungi, neurons, communities) have MULTIPLE INPUTS. As musicians, this means diversifying our skillsets and understanding of group dynamics. This increases our CONNECTIVITY. Once we find those connections, it is important to beware of stagnation (like inbreeding in genetics). A steady stream of BALANCED randomness—QUENCHED DISORDER—must permeate your musical life if you are to sustain an inspired career.

To extend the landscape metaphor with natural selection into musical terms, look at a closeup of a record groove. It looks like a canyon. Music—in the flow of time—makes it like being locked into a river raft hurling through a canyon whose walls reflect our expectations and sense of surprise. Class 5 rapids are akin to music with a lot of unpredictable randomness or noise, Class 1 more like a single sine wave or drone.

Extending the metaphor to life in general—if the oar of our raft is fixed (like a stuck feedback loop), it will smash into the bends and will wipeout. If our raft is too loose (ie too much disorder), it could run aground or fall out of the groove completely. The key is finding balance between our Feedback processes (which can stagnate) and Disorder (which can lead to chaos).

Here are some specific suggestions:

• Playing confidently in many styles and situations (INPUTS)

• Never letting your practice routine stagnate. Change it up frequently. (QUENCHED DISORDER)

• Staying alert and in good mental/physical health (CONNECTIVITY/BALANCE)

• Knowing how to play your role in the system. Method acting-like flow. Silence is always an option. (CONNECTIVITY)

• Changing where you go and who you interact with. Seek out diversity including non musicians. (QUENCHED DISORDER)

• You are not a machine. Your humanity is often expressed through your imperfections. (QUENCHED DISORDER)

• Question musical orthodoxy (QUENCHED DISORDER). But prioritize connection. (BALANCE)

• In composition, use repetition and counter repetition (ie feedback loops and quenched disorder) to craft sound. (BALANCE)

In general, many musicians have a tendency to think locking themselves in a room and practicing technique is the way to become a great. Yes, it is important to get those 10,000 hours in. Eventually, however, you’ll notice that EVERYONE has put in their 10,000 hours, so what sets you apart? The answer lies in how you find your connective fabric. By making ourselves ADAPTABLE and CONNECTABLE along with a willingness to embrace bits of against the grain DISORDER, we mirror mechanisms found in nature. This is how we differentiate our creativity from AI slop.

She spoke of how we solve our crisis of fragmentation. “We need to learn to be humble again and in direct communication…looking beyond the existing institutions and political networks to examine what real connectivity and collective experience looks like…In times like this we have to be experimental, make stuff up and be comfortable with failure, think creatively and take risks together.”

This resonated with me profoundly as someone who cares about art in an era of rapidly advancing tech. The internet and AI has DEVALUED art, putting the humanities and especially arts education on its heels as it feebly tries to explain the value of these programs amidst rising tuition costs. The idea of a degree being a cause and effect skill-unlocking to gig access pipeline is a farce that needs honest reexamination.

Yes, one needs to do their 10,000 hours in the woodshed practicing technique, absorbing artistic vocabulary, and even learning to take arbitrary direction. But there is more to being an artist than mimicry and order. It is almost like the entirety of our approach to education is akin to telling kids to walk in the snow by putting their feet directly in the footprints already laid.

This is exactly how AI works. It is past perfected. A feedback loop perpetually stuck on yesterday. AI is by definition incapable of real human novelty. Yet you see music departments doubling down on tech and AI.

Tech and institutional orthodoxy—while having the benefits of individual accomplishment and external validation of work accomplished in a room alone—is a step away from Laurie Anderson’s idea of “connectivity…collective experience…[and] taking risks together.” You don’t need a college for the information. AI does that. You don’t need it to teach tech literacy. AI does that.

What we DO need are institutions to shift their curriculums towards practicing collective experimentation and human empathy. The template for this type of education exists from almost a century ago—Black Mountain College.

From 1933-1957—a period similarly marked by mass media fueling the rise of fragmentation and fascism—this experimental program near Asheville, North Carolina was a established as a sort of utopian democratic environment in which artists lived and created with each other in a summer camp-like environment.

The program attracted a diaspora of European artists fleeing Europe to teach and study art, dance, music, photography, and sculpture. It’s alumni and faculty are among the most important artists of mid 20th Century, including Jacob Lawrence, Ruth Asawa, Willem de Koonig, Lou Harrison, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and many others. Way ahead of its time, the college’s experimental curriculum was personalized and flexible. Most importantly, it emphasized collaboration across disciplines. THIS WAS THE KEY!

Painters had to take dance classes, musicians had to take art classes, dancers had to learn to sculpt. Josef Alpers, the legendary head of the art department required first year art students to draw with their off hand. Overall, the school’s concept was to strip art down to it’s most basic principles, focussing on the most rudimentary ideas of perception. John Cage professed making music as chance sound events in time to create form, Alpers emphasized basic shapes and color illusion, Merce Cunningham’s choreography detached itself from music and specific storytelling instead using natural movement. Rather than focus on the acquiring of common existing artistic language, Black Mountain reduced art down to it’s most primal childlike qualities and created an open landscape of experimentation and open collaboration where intention and conception was favored over technique.1

I would argue that in response to the current fragmentation brought on by the internet and AI, schools should reorient themselves around the concepts espoused by Black Mountain College. In fact, the survival of arts education DEPENDS on it! The informational roadmap is no longer protected by tuition paywalls. It is free and frictionless on Youtube and with AI. Institutional curriculums—with their committees, meetings, and red tape—will always be outpaced by YouTube creators and frictionless internet tools.

What the kids need today IS friction. But outside an orthodox framework. Challenge them to transform a painting into music. Challenge them to improvise with a choreographer. Challenge them to make an instrument or unique software plugin. Make a musician write a piece off a theme in Russian Literature. Make a dancer transform the ideas of Einstein into movement.

If this changes the way a university approaches admissions, then so be it. Maybe universities should start paying less attention to demonstrations of technical prowess (ie footsteps in the snow) and focussing more on kids demonstrating varied interests, social/emotional malleability and willingness to be fearless and vulnerable. The goal is to produce musicians and artists who seek out each other over sitting in a room alone with the internet. This focus on social fabric building helps with both constructing a successful career as well as making you a deeper artist.

Arts ed is in crisis. But not one that it can’t overcome. Like Laurie Anderson said, “we have to look beyond our current institutions.” Novel ideas will be born out of the FRICTION of experimental collaboration. Schools must lean into their together-in-one-place-ness as it is the only exclusive commodity institutions now have.

This will require tough choices for deans. But it is not like entire curriculums have to be scrapped. Keep some of the nuts and bolts of technique intact, but maybe spend less time instructing in those areas in order to focus on character building and community. This is what the kids are paying for. More importantly, it is the way artists show society a way forward.

All sound in human consciousness is perceived on a spectrum between unchanging repetition/drone to noise/randomness. Nature, urban areas, a cave, an airplane all have their sonic signatures. When they hit our ears they leave an impression. If we tune in, every moment of our perception is marked by our brain noting the sound event in consciousness. You hear a car passing by on the street…your brain takes note of the fact that it’s a car and that it is moving in a particular direction. You’ve heard cars pass by thousands of times and so it’s not out of the ordinary at all. Your brain barely takes note of it because it expects the sound. Sentiently, it feels pretty neutral. Neither positive nor negative. But if it hears screeching of brakes, the vibe instantly modulates negative as we think someone could be hurt.

Music exists on this same continuum. As a composer and improvisor, I form sound ideas over time that present the listener with familiarity (like the car passing by). And when I disrupt that familiarity (like the screeching brakes) it will hit different. Moment to moment the composer is making choices, modulating on the Noise/Predictability spectrum.

Our conscious minds have developed through genetic mutation and natural selection to utilize sound as a survival tool. As sentient beings with pressure to persist, we have an awareness of the ‘flavor’ or VALENCE of every moment. Is this moment going to lead me towards suffering or ascension? It could be an issue of life and death—“is that a saber tooth tiger behind me?” or it could be as innocuous as “I didn’t expect them to go to the five chord there.” Line up a bunch of valenced moments in a row and you are guiding the listener through a curated emotional journey.

Every musical audience has its own expectation profile. There is a median baseline as to where the line between order and chaos exists, and it is the artists’ responsibility to modulate around that line. For instance, “Playing the hits” or “playing that Oscar Peterson lick” would be presenting familiarity (ie I’ve heard that before), whereas a “Remix” or spontaneous accelerando would be presenting unfamiliarity (ie woah that was different). There are a gazillion possibilities, but reduced to the most primal neurological experience, music plays in the space of familiar/unfamiliar to sculpt the emotional contour.

NOW HERE’S THE RUB…

The “for art’s sake” approach of stripping music down to its sentient value runs antithetical to the incentive structures of the commercial mass media industry.

Capital favors predictability.

Pop concerts are ritual singalongs where everyone’s auditory experience is exactly what they expect. But with lasers and cool people to look at. Classical concerts are their own kind of ritual with their liturgical orthodoxy and social mores. Jazz musicians think their music is novel but aside from its conversational complexity, it’s a pretty fixed formula with its own limits.

I’m not saying these things are inherently bad. These institutions are actually much bigger than music. They are cultural constructs resistant to unpredictability. The main takeaway here should be that MUSICAL PRODUCT IS DIFFERENT FROM MUSIC ITSELF.

When someone buys a vinyl album or buys a ticket to your show, it is a contract. The buyers expectation has to be met. In the same way as General Mills slinging consistent boxes of Cheerios, capital sets up an incentive structure to consistently meet those expectations. Buuuuut…

Music still changes over time. Why???

Because if art DOESNT change, it becomes predictable. Overly predictable art loses its ability to tell stories through the moment to moment constructs of predictability/unpredictability mentioned above. Without freshness, art stagnates and loses its ability to carry emotion. And the money dwindles.

The human artistic experience (and subsequently the industry) DEMANDS NEW. The capital-driven feedback loops must be broken from time to time by novel artists who throw disorder into their art.

(Sidebar: there’s a whole scientific field dedicated to the study of feedback loops and systemic adaptation in nature called COMPLEXITY THEORY. Worth checking out the book by Neil Theise: Notes on Complexity).

Not that you have to be Captain Beefheart or John Cage, but art’s survival depends on us NOT doing things like everyone else. (That’s why overly automated music and AI slop sounds a little soulless). And the best way to find the right amount of novelty in whatever style you create is to strip it down to the basic tenets of predictability/surprise (ie order/chaos).

Modulating around this border between order and chaos is where the magic of emotional storytelling lives. To do this effectively requires a blurring between the experience of the performer and audience. Performance becomes less of a demonstration of something practiced and more of a “come along with me emotionally” kind of experience. And I would argue that CLARITY OF AGENDA is what the greatest artists (both commercially successful and otherwise) all exhibit.

For the artist, this blurring of the subject/object relationship with an audience is powerful. It causes the artist to be honest about what they are offering to the room. This is a connective force. When we artists key in on the balance between predictability and unpredictability, order and chaos, we construct emotional bridges, and we feel comforted by knowing we are not alone in the universe.

Aside from a few of my really cool looking friends, the notion of “successful artist” became more and more elusive as album sales in the 2000’s plummeted.

Luckily there are enough people in the world with a little cash to blow on live musicians that I was able to scrounge together a moderately successful career as a young musician in the 2000’s. I did it ALL. Not because I wanted to (i wanted to be the next Harry Connick Jr.) but out of NECESSITY. Any style, any place, any budget. Just playing, teaching, recording, composing, even PRETENDING to play…WHEREVER.

There were definitely dark times. Like when we showed up for a Jazz gig in Yuma, AZ and they provided a CONCERT BASS DRUM instead of a BASS. They finally found a piece of shit loaner bass at the last minute but it didn’t even matter because only one person attended the show: the very student who loaned us the bass. Ask any musician, and they will have stories like this. I have dozens. It’s simply called Paying Dues.

My early dues paying eventually led me to one of the most unique jobs in the entertainment industry as SNL’s Composer Musical Director. It’s a place where I have to quickly assemble music for live band or playback to support comedy. Then I have to coach sometimes terrified A-list celebrities on singing our dumb songs on a live television broadcast. There is no gig that trains you for this job nor is there a gig it trains you FOR.

I’d like to use this Substack to share things from the unique vantage point of a musician with a close INSIDE relationship with the great popular musical artists and actors of our time, but also from someone on the OUTSIDE of the industry’s incentive structure. I work with Ariana, Bruno, Charlie, Sabrina, Benito, Gaga…intensely for ONE WEEK. We accomplish a challenging task together. On a COMEDY SHOW.

Then they leave.

So, because I’m a part of a separate TV/Comedy fabric (thanks to Lorne) I don’t need to kiss anyone’s ass in the music industry. I’m thereby more able to clearly observe the incentive structures embedded in these artists’ organizations.

From this INSIDER/OUTSIDER vantage point I’ll be writing about things like:

How do certain people get certain gigs? What’s the difference between good and great? What is our role? What’s the difference between Wow and Woah? How do we collaborate? How do we collectively create something bigger than the sum of it’s parts? How does spiritual grounding play into people wanting to make music with us?

I’m also interested in books about science, philosophy and aesthetics and will write about the connections to entertainment and music.

And of course you might get a story or two about something crazy that happened at SNL that week.