WHAT'S UP FLEMMARD BOY!

Hello. I am a Design/Compsci student from Aotearoa.

This is my CD, FLEMMARD BOY (lazybones boy). I made it as part of a university assignment: (an AI-based investigation into a theme of my choosing (spirituality, time).

My CD is a conceptual, eclectic mix of experimental tracks. I used AI to create 7 (count em, 7) tracks representing ideas I had about time, spirituality, and AI. My goal for this project was to create different feelings, represent moments in time, and illustrate concepts from my research. I also wanted to explore AI tooling....

I wanted to make a CD because:

I thought it'd be cool to use retro media -> AI didn't exist when CDs were at their peak!
I think a lot of AI creations are either TOO DIGITAL -> and hard to connect with, or NOT HUMAN ENOUGH -> a badly-made CD is like the peak of shitty-human-media.

I used a range of different AI, manual editing software, my own ideas, and free samples from the internet to make my CD. The tracks should be publicly available via this drive link.

Supplies

For lyrics, I entered prompts into these, and tweaked the output manually:

Claude (AI)
ChatGPT (AI)
Google Translate

For sound:

Stable Audio (AI)
Pixabay (free audio samples - back tracks, which I altered)
Murf.ai (AI text-to-speech)
Microsoft Clipchamp (editing software)

I also used:

an online mp4-to-mp3 converter
my CD drive, to burn it, and a disk too yep

And non-digitally:

pencils, pens, glue, tape (CD pamphlet & case-mending)
old thrift shop CD case

Step 1: RESEARCH FOR IDEAS !

Sorry about this big text wall.

I thought it'd be important to include a bit on research, as it really influenced my design process' direction, and might help explain the meaning behind my CD & tracks.

I looked at many articles, journal entries, books, videos, etc, making notes and reflections.... I found that the themes of AI, spirituality, and time intersect in very interesting ways.

Cool concepts to note (cool phrases to drop): the increased tempo of modern life, "information stacking" & the dissolution of past-present-future.

To summarize what I found out: I think that the experience and meaning of time is very important to the modern age. I also think that experience & meaning are changing a lot with the advent of new tech:

we have more access to information, more responsibilities and desires. there's endless content, but no time to filter or consume it...
attention is more distributed
AI & autonomous tech are better & faster than us. we have to be more efficient, and push our boundaries.
as a society, we're pressuring people to be productive all the time
AI can predict future, and invent the past...
... and many more reasons!

I tried to represent these concepts in my choice of tracks.

Step 2: GETTING TRACK & COVER IDEAS

I decided on some ideas for tracks... I would use a combination of AI tools, editing the ai output & adding the tracks I liked to my CD.

Here, you can see a NAME BRAINSTORM & a PLANNING PAGE including what my CD could include, and short explanations of what each track would be about.

Step 3: MAKING SONGS...

Now, I started playing around with AI tools to make my tracks.

AMBIENT

I used stable.ai to make some ambient tracks about places/settings I felt were relevant to my themes.

I input prompts that might reflect these settings' atmosphere. Examples include "banging wood blocks together, computer mice, bare foot running", or "harps, flutes, stressful".

LYRIC-BASED

I also made some lyric-based tracks. I used a couple of weird strategies for this.

I would input a range of "idea options" into chatGPT or claude, mentioning influences or themes. Then, I would get AI to translate them into different languages.

-> TANGENT: why different languages?

cool effect & bypasses the cringiness of AI lyrics
i am jealous of bilingual people, and AI is very powerful with language... lots of potential

After this, I removed and added lyrics. I then used text-to-speech ai Murf.ai for this.

Then, I would think about the musical influences I wanted for the track, and ask chat-based AI about the instruments, techniques, and BPMs they used. I used this information to search Pixabay for free samples to use as back tracks.

From here, I put all of my sounds into Clipchamp & played around with timings, cropping, repeating sections, etc. until I was happy with what I had.

MY FINAL TRACKLIST WAS:

Joining LinkedIn
SONG FOR MY DESK
Youth Chemicals
EXAM TIME
DINNER TABLE
Trim the Fat
TRAINING WHEELS

(CAPS = "ambient". ALso I thought a lot about the order of this hahaha)

Step 4: MAKING THE CASE !

After burning the tracks to my CD, I decided to make a pamphlet & case.

I referenced an existing CD to see what I needed for this.

Using paper, I made a title, back, inner pamphlet, and a track list. I also decorated the disc :-B

Step 5: PLAYING THE CD

Here is a video of me playing the cd. I open all of the parts and show you all of the stuff.

The track playing is "Joining LinkedIn", about workplace culture soullessness, and the spiritual/temporal weirdness of LinkedIn. It is made in the style of the 80s NYC drag queen Divine.

That's all! Again, here is the link to my songs.

Thanks for checking this out !