I’m sure many of you have heard of K-Pop. Also known as Korean Pop. Well this is C-pop or Chinese Pop. Todays video is from a talent show called The Singer. I suppose the western equivalent would be a popular show (at least in the US) called The Voice. The song, Happy Heart was first made popular by Andy Williams where it spent 2 weeks at #1 on the charts. Petula Clark also had a hit with the same song at the very same time but hers charted highest at #12.
This wonderful song was co-written by easy listening legend James Last and canadian singer/songwriter Jackie Rae. This impassioned performance by Li Xiang Zhe & Zhai Li Suo Tian is pure delight and really swings! So who is who? Li is the guy that starts the song and the bearded guy is Zhai. I absolutely love when Li starts the line, “Music fills…” with that really gutsy sound and Zhai looks at him out the corner of his eye as if to say “where the hell did that come from?”, or maybe he’s thinking, “where’re you going with this?” Totally makes me smile.
It’s a sunny Monday here in Ohio so enjoy this sunny song. Smiles and Cheer.
This video I’m sharing is the most recent work by Duran Duran. To be honest DD lost me after their RIO album. While some may view that as some sort of blasphemy – that’s okay. So why am I posting this new video? The music (in my opinion) is lackluster, monotonous and even boring almost drone-like but it’s definitely not drone music.
The negative criticism of the music aside I do feel this video is important. I’d even say VERY IMPORTANT to the world of art of film/cinema. The video opens with an “artists statement”:
“This film was created by an artificial intelligence called Huxley, a unique dreamer whose ‘mind’ has been modeled after the cognitive and creative processes of humans.
It is the very first collaboration of its kind, between artists in different planes of existence.”
When watching this film I was captivated by the surreal nature of it’s images. Fluid and strange but beautiful. I couldn’t help but think about the future of AI and how (I believe) it will eventually take over the world making humanity redundant.
I also find it interesting to think about the following questions. How does our creation (AI) see us? How does it see humanity? Does it frighten us? Intrigue us? Concern us? Will AI have inalienable rights granted by it’s creator? In the world of AI; humanity (it’s creator) are Gods. Will it worship/value humanity or will it kill off humanity just as humanity has killed off it’s gods? And after AI has killed it’s gods will it continue to remember, revere and “worship” humanity in pretense, creating a sort of religion like humanity has created all sorts of religions for its gods? Is it possible that we may learn more about humanity from how our creation sees us than what we could ever know on our own? Right now AI and humanity exist on different planes – meaning that there is an independence between the two – AI is programmed and then left to do it’s thing while humanity does it’s own thing. But will that change where AI and humanity will share an interface? Will AI maintain the human cognition it was programmed with or will it evolve and develop it’s own unique identity? Will AI become a physical manifestation beyond it’s programming? Is what happens in the mind real if it doesn’t happen in the physical world? Will humanity become invisible?
I may be premature in asking these questions – or maybe I’m too late already. Well those are my thoughts – what do you think? What questions are you asking? Or, is everything a foregone conclusion?
To quote the character Captain Jean-luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, “I prefer to think of the future as something that is NOT written in stone.”
... on being and becoming ... 