Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas - 73 | Grimes (c) on Music, Creativity, and Digital Personae

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Changing technologies have always affected how we produce and enjoy art, and music might be the most obvious example. Radio and recordings made it easy for professional music to be widely disseminated, but created a barrier to its creation. Nowadays computers are helping to reverse that trend, allowing casual users to create slick songs of their own. Not everyone is equally good at it, however; Grimes (who currently goes by c, the symbol for the speed of light) is a wildly successful electronic artist who writes, produces, performs, and sings her own songs. We dig into how music is made in the modern world, but also go well beyond that, into artificial intelligence and the nature of digital/virtual/online personae. We talk about the birth of a new digital avatar -- who might be called "War Nymph"? -- and how to navigate the boundaries of art, technology, fashion, and culture. Her new album Miss Anthropocene will be released in February 2020. Support Mindscape on Patreon. Grimes, or c, studied neuroscience at McGill University before turning full-time to music. Her previous albums include Geidi Primes, Halfaxa, Visions, and Art Angels. Her latest album, Miss Anthropocene, channels the goddess of climate change. On December 5th in Miami, she will be orchestrating the one-night-only rave Bio-Haque. Web site AllMusic profile Wikipedia Twitter Instagram YouTube

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Agents who are realtors do more than open doors. They analyze market trends, interest rates, comps. They can tell you about flood zones, mixed use zones, and decode acronyms like HOA, APR, MLS. They connect you to lawyers, contractors, even Phil, the Seward scope guy. They negotiate, coordinate, advocate for you, close the deal with you, and hand the keys to you. They bring you home. Realtors are members of the National Association of Realtors, right by you. Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. And today we want to talk about art and reality and how art and reality are both mediated through technology. Our guest is Grimes, the musician slash producer who is now, I think, known as C. She's changed her name to C, the letter C after the speed of light, which tickles my physicist's instincts. But I went by Grimes for purposes of this podcast because I think that that's the artist title on the most.

recent album that she's come out with. I think the best way to describe Grimes' work is as someone who produces music, both literally as the producer of her own albums, but she writes the music, she records the music, she writes the lyrics, and she sings in addition to doing all of that production. So she says she wants to go down in history, not as a singer or dancer, but as a music producer. And so we're going to learn a little bit about the technique of that. You know, I think this is a situation where technology has given to a wide number of people the ability to make their own music. Grime started just by firing up garage band on her Mac and going from there. Her two most recent albums are visions and art angels, which were both very popular, won a number of awards and things like that.

And just now, she's come out with a brand new album, Miss Anthropocene, will explain, excavate the origin of that particular name here in the podcast. and a new single so heavy I fell through the earth. And I have to say, you know, I like it. We play actually several clips of the music here in the episodes. You'll get to see whether or not it's your kind of thing or not. The Grimes is also someone who's very interested in technology and AI and the digital world for its own sake. So we talk a little bit about what it means to live and breathe digitally.

In fact, we get the first insight here on this podcast into a new process, into a new project that she just launched with a new digital avatar. So Grimes explains that she wants to really make obvious the fact that who we are in Midspace, in real life, is different than who we are online. So it's sort of an ongoing art project, she's going to have a literally separate digital avatar that will be her online persona from now on.

It's supposed to be an expression of something that we all do, one way or the other. We're not the same person on Twitter or, in the comment sections of YouTube as we are in person. So let's look at that. This is what art does. It shines a light on different aspects of human life. So it was a very fun conversation.

You know, Grimes is not an academic like many of the people I have on the podcast. So instead of a bunch of little potted lectures, we actually have a very organic conversation that digs into some very interesting issues. I think you're going to like it. Also, don't stop the recording too soon because as we reach the natural end point of our conversation, we wondered, you know, is there anything more we should talk about and we ended up keeping up talking? So there's like a special promo bit at the end of the podcast

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See penshoel.com slash warranty for full details and terms. All right, Grimes, welcome to the Mindscape podcast. Thank you for having me. I think this is the first ever professionally produced podcast I've had, because Grimes was just adjusting the levels on our microphones here, which I've never had done. Okay, but I don't think I went that deep there, though. It's all relative, and relative to what I usually have, it's pretty good. Is it a bit low, though, don't you think?

It's a bit low, but that's okay. We'll fix it. Right. It's still professional. So let me start with the question I'm sure is on everyone's mind. What was your favorite episode of the Mindscape podcast so far? I'm going to have to say the one with Liv, because I know her. Libri, yeah.

But actually my favorite one was the one with, I forget her name. The one about like, you know, like AI and Greek mythology and stuff. Oh, yeah. All that stuff. That one really was like super fun. That was a little out there one, but I loved it. So out there. No, that's what I loved about.

Ancient robots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one kind of blew my mind a little bit, actually. Andoids in ancient mythology. Yeah. Did you listen to the one with Lynn Kelly on memory palaces? That's a sort of similar in spirit kind of thing. Okay, it is.

Okay. Yeah. She's an Australian scholar who, number one, studies memory, like, you know how you can build physical structures to improve your memory? Yes, yes, yes. So she has a theory that Stonehenge and other ancient things are memory palaces. Interesting. Okay. Because they didn't have books.

Yeah. So they would transfer memory through generations through these. giant things. You might like that one also. Okay. Actually, wow. I mean, I saw the name and I was like, oh, name, memory palace. It's a bit too fun. But now, I don't know, you're really selling it. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. I mean, they're all good. The physics ones are good, too. I love the physics ones. Yeah. But no, I'm glad you brought up Adrian Mayors one, because that's, I haven't thought about that one a while, and that was a fun one. You know, whenever, I do sort of try to

secretly find some science angle, but I'm happy to talk about whatever. Cool. Speaking of which, I thought since some folks in the audience might not be familiar with your work, others might be your biggest fans. Let's start by playing a little excerpt from a song. Okay. And then we can dig into how it comes to be. Cool. Do we want to choose a song after the fact or do we want to just?

Why don't we just play, we'll figure it out and then you play it and then, or should we? I'm going to expose facto put it in, right? So we can do whatever we want. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. just choose at last minute. Yeah, exactly. If we so desire. Let's imagine that it's violence because I can't get that thing out of my head.

Okay, sure. All right. So let's give it a listen. There we go, yeah. Okay, so for a song like that, I mean, describe how it comes to be. Well, see, that one's weird because that is one of the only songs in my career that I have not produced. Oh, okay. So that's, that's just an odd one.

Okay. Out. So. Well, it gives you a flavor for, it's within your, you know, ooh, right? Like it fits into your style pretty well, you think? Yeah.

Sure. I mean, I don't really have a style. Okay. I'm post style. Post style? Yeah. That's good. That's good.

We could imagine you played a different song also and then... Okay. So this one is called... Kill me maim. Kill the maim. It sounds kind of violent. It's pretty violent. Yeah?

Yeah. You know, it's supposed to sort of a girl's name. Kill the maim. Oh, I see. Kill the maim. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Well, this is one thing you do, right? Like you have personas. Are you singing in the persona of this girl? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, and yeah, speaking of personas, I feel like we can go deep there because we've been doing some crazy, we've been making some technological personas. Oh, nice. Yes. But yeah, no, this is just a, I don't know.

Is it a song about better to kill someone or just fuck them up? Do you start with, but do you start with like the beat, the melody, the lyrics? Yeah. Usually. Yeah. So I'll just like sit down. and like, I don't know, you just get drum samples or you create drum samples and you just build it out.

So you're literally at your computer. Yeah, yeah, you sit down on a computer. People know nothing about how this happens. Okay, you sit down on a computer, you open a DAW digital audio workspace, like Ableton Live. I don't know if you've ever seen any of this. I have not? It's kind, have you ever played around with like Imovie?

Yeah, okay, a little bit. Audacity is what I use for the podcast. Okay, audacity. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay, so yeah, that's a digital audio workspace. Ableton's just a really great one because it's very advanced. you can do a lot. And then I'll just be like,

do, like get out a little thing and, like, actually play the beat. Okay. And then I'll usually go through and, like, you know, if it's like a kick drum, I'll, like, make the low frequencies

sound nicer. And if it's like a snare, I'll, like, take out low frequency. You know, that kind of stuff. Okay. So what you're given in the workspace is the individual sounds and you put them together to a beat

or are you given a whole drum music? You can construct the sounds from scratch. Okay. But you don't have to. Or you can, like, buy, like, a sample pack and, like, get sounds. Or you can, get like an 808 or like a hardware and make sounds.

It's kind of, I mean, the way I describe production is it's sort of probably like what like someone like Mozart used to do, except, you know, like you can actually see it in real time so you don't have to be able to, you know, imagine everything. But you're basically making the whole thing. Yeah, okay. Like you're like composing, you're scoring, you're like writing the melodies, harmonies, whatever, and you are making the drums and you just kind of construct a piece of music from scratch.

Okay. So is it intentional that you start with the bead? Is that like a creative choice, or is it just easiest to find the rest of the structure that way? I'm just not, I like a, I just need to know the BPM and I cannot compose to a click. Like if it's like, it's just not, that doesn't work. So I need to make the beat. I'll often delete it and make another one that's better. I usually just, I make like a kind of a crappy one, like a MIDI, like just some,

then I do, you know, chords, whatever. blah, blah, blah, make sounds. Then I'll, like, do, like, weird wordless vocals that are like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I go back and, like, it's almost, it's sort of like a weird religious experience because it sort of feels like, oh, what's happening? You get in a zone of some sort of. You get in the zone. It feels like it's being written for you, and then you go back.

And then it's like a weird puzzle that you go back retroactively and, like, solve. It's like, I can change the synth to a much nicer synth or maybe like a hardware synth instead of a software synth. I mean, like, write lyrics that roughly sound like what I was mumbling. I'm going to like, yeah, that's kind of how it works. Okay. I mean, I have this, I can't help to think of, you know, a Jane Austen novel where after dinner, one of the ladies would play piano and sing, right?

And so every woman in society had to have those skills. And we've lost those since there are records and things like that. Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, because, yeah, women used to be a thing. Women would be like fucking playing. Sorry, am I allowed to swear? Yeah, well, we'll mark it as explicit. Don't worry.

It's fine. Okay. Got it. Okay. Are any other of your other episodes explicit? Seth MacFarlane was swearing like a sailor, yeah. Don't remember. Okay, okay, cool.

Cool, Seth McFarland. I meant to listen to that one because I love Seth. It's good. Okay, but yes. So, but what I'm wondering is, you know, does this electronics idea help us bring back the idea that we're all making music? People, it can be much more widespread. I do think it should be more widespread. And the one thing I love about stuff like Audacity or Ableton or whatever is it's super democratizing music.

Because for a while, it used to be like in the 70s or whatever. It's like millions of dollars. make an album. It's really expensive to go to a studio, like record on tape, whatever. Like, that's all, like, really expensive. And it's still, I would say prohibitively expensive at the moment for a lot of people, but in 10 years, I think everyone will have access to the same tools, basically. Okay. Which part of it is prohibitively expensive? Like, Ableton is... Oh, the software and stuff? Software. Yeah. Computer, computers are still expensive. Like, like, a good computer that can actually run, like, I kind of need, like, a desktop. Like, I can't

just be like on a laptop or an iPad kind of thing to actually, you know. So it's not super prohibitively expensive, but it's like upper middle class kind of vibes at the moment. Right. And yeah. But that's changing. That will definitely democratize pretty quickly. And a lot of people are making software that is very affordable or very cheap that can emulate

like really nice hardware. Like I feel like we're kind of hitting like a singularity point in like five or ten years where like you won't need really anything. By hardware, you mean things like drums and guitars. Like a really nice microphone. Oh, okay. So, you know, like a really nice preamp or a compressor. Like there's things that right now, it just does not sound as good if you don't have hardware.

Okay. Because it's, you know, it's just like actually really, you know, real equipment and like emulating it. But the emulations are just getting better and better. Yeah. You know, you don't buy new furniture every day. Once you buy a piece of furniture, that's probably going to be with you a long time. You're going to live with it every single day. So joybird.com lets you customize your furniture.

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You'll receive an exclusive offer for 25% off your first order by using the code Mindscape. And I think I've mentioned this on the podcast several times before because it really did make an impression on me. But I was at an event at South by Southwest put on by Sony. And they have an artificial intelligence that will help you write a melody. Okay. Yeah. See, and that's another thing I really wanted to talk about because I feel like we're in also like the end of art, human art. Okay.

Yeah. Elaborate on that? I mean, once AI, once there's actually like AGI, like why the, it's just going to be so much better at making art than us. Artificial, sorry, AGI. Like artificial general. Like once there's like, not just like AI, not just like AI, like, oh, it can like, you know, like just do one task or with basic things. Not just playing chess. But like once AI is like can totally master science and art, which could happen in the next 10 years, probably more like 20 or 30 years.

I don't know what you think. I'm actually curious, kind of curious what you think. Well, let's talk about that. You know, I just had a podcast with Melanie Mitchell who is skeptical a little bit. She works. She's an artificial intelligence researcher. It's funny to talk to the people in the field because there's a lot. wide variety of expectations, right? And I think it depends on what you do for a living. Like,

the people who do try to build, you know, chess playing computers and whatever know how hard it is to go beyond that. If you suddenly say, well, okay, but imagine playing chess, but you start without one of your nights. Your computer knows nothing. Yes. It just learned a certain thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think that there's a feeling, number one, that's hard, but number two, well, maybe the whole strategy we've been using is just not meant to do that, and a different strategy might be better. I do feel a different strategy. Well, I feel like we'll probably get to a point where it'll be building itself and then it'll be much better building itself than we are, which I think they're already doing at like deep mind and stuff. I've heard about that. Yeah,

I don't know. So you think that that's likely thing to happen? Yeah, because I mean, it'll just be so much better at, it'll be able to do 10 years of work in a day or whatever. So I do think there'll be also a critical point where it's sort of like there's like a runaway effect and we become irrelevant and maybe it's still far away from becoming what it will be, but it'll just get there. Well, I know Max Tegmark, a friend of mine, who is trained as a cosmologist as I am, but he's now doing AI research and his...

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Yes. That is to say, find equations that govern a set of data. And it can be done. Yeah. So art sounds, on the one hand, easier to make some art, maybe harder to make great art. I don't know. I agree, but I think ultimately, AI will get to a point where it will be able to emulate all our hormones, all our feelings, all our emotions. And it'll be able to see great art and it'll be able to understand what true innovation is, probably even better than we can. Maybe, yeah. You know, and I do think there's, I think this is both great and bad, but I think part of the reason it's great is that I feel like we're kind of in this, like, amazing time where we might be like the last artist ever. Yeah. Which is like, feels fun. The last best artist. We're already the last best chess players, right?

Yeah. Yeah, true. The last chess players, I mean, they're already, like, obsolete, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Go players, it was a, it was a, Go is, I don't know how familiar you are with Go. I'm not familiar with the game, but I'm familiar with, like, Demis and stuff. Right.

And the serious players devote their lives to it. You know, they start, they go to Go school starting at five years old, right? And they were devastated when the computer beat them because not only did it get better, but it played differently. Yeah. It came up with things that they had never imagined. Precisely. And, you know, I don't know Go, but I, you know, what people were saying is that the computer was playing beautifully and like artistically.

And like, you know, that's why I'm like, it's going to, you know, it's going to be good at painting and writing and probably art forms that we haven't even thought of at the moment, you know. Yeah. Well, one more data point on your side is also from Melanie's book. Douglas Hofstadter was her PhD thesis advisor. He wrote Gertl Escherbach. Oh, yeah.

I don't know it. I haven't read it. Yeah. But so he did an experiment. You know, he either wrote or found a music writing software AI. and had it emulate Chopin. And then he played for a bunch of people who were classical music fans, but not Chopin experts.

He played that and an early sort of juvenile piece by Chopin and said, you know, which one sounds better and everyone voted for the computer. Yes. To be more Chopin-like. This is what I just like, it's going to be, well, wow, more Chopin-like. Interesting. Yeah.

I mean, that's not really fair, though, because he didn't. Oh, it was trained on Chopin, right? So it was not original. Yeah, I mean, if it was early Chopin and he hadn't like, that's not quite totally fair. But. But it's in the direction. It's in the direction.

This is what you're saying. Like, you know, if on the one hand we're democratizing our own abilities to make these things, but on the other hand, we now have competition. Well, we're also going to run out of, like, I feel like we're kind of, well, I feel like, luckily we're in this kind of sick spot where, like, technology is allowing for, like, new art forms and stuff. But we do, like, we are kind of, like, running out of ideas in some, in some regards. And it's like, I feel like AI are going to, it will enjoy things in ways that we don't enjoy things. It will make art for itself.

And it will, like, just. make art forms that are enjoyable in ways that we can't even conceive of at the moment. Do you? Which is the true, I think that that will be the real innovation when it's not even making art for us anymore. It's making art like for a new like set set of standards of like what is good art because yeah. Yeah, I need to think about that.

We need to get back to it. But first I want to ask, do you use any AI kind of little software programs in your? I think there is actually a lot of AI. I mean, there's a lot of AI and everything. Like there's AI and Instagram filters and stuff. Okay. So by that metric, totally. I do use the magenta.

What's that weird synth I have from Google? It's called the N-Synth, N-Synth. Okay. I don't know if you've heard of this. I mean, I think there is actually like sort of juvenile AI in many aspects of... Sure, but okay, but that's not what I mean. I'm not sure what I mean, but, you know, does AI come into the creativity to the melody writing or the beat creating? Not at the moment.

Sometimes I'll use a thing that might generate beats, but I don't know if it's AI so much as just generative. Just random numbers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I did actually recently make some AI meditations. You made some? Yes. Okay.

Well, actually, I didn't make it. The AI made it. Okay. But we fed. There's a partnership, I presume. Yes. It was a collaboration where we like fed it a bunch of. So you know with calm and headspace and stuff?

No. The meditation apps? I don't think so. Really? You don't know about these weird meditation. It's like these apps you can get on your phone that like help you meditate. And honestly, like I started getting into them and I was like, wow, this is great. Like, I'm just way more.

calm and like happy. But then I was like, but this is just creatively just the worst shit I've ever. It's just like, close your eye. Like, oh, that it's just like weird corporate. That shuts you down. Meditation.

Well, it's just walks. Calms you? I mean, meditation, honestly, is boring. It's just the same shit over and over again. Right. And, you know, and it's like embarrassing to listen to around other people. And it's just like, you know,

it's just some like totally like white people, yuppie shit, like just having these like weird corporate meditations like through an app on my phone. I'm just like, wow, this just creatively. is like an embarrassing experience. Yeah. I was at a sort of symposium where they began with a mindfulness. Yes.

Just mindfulness. No, don't. I'm like, mindfulness is way too wholesome. It's basically my thought. I was like, mindfulness is just, it's not edgy. It's not cool. It's not dark. I was like, so I was like, I'm going to feed this AI with my friend Matt Aminetti, who built AI,

like a bunch of meditations from these apps. And then the AI sort of like writing these crazy meditations. And they were so. weird and they just got, they did actually just get really weird Blade Runner kind of dark, disjointed, like, and they were like beautiful. Like they're like, so is this, do you mean, is it sounds or words? It's speaking. Okay.

But it's sort of like trying to emulate other meditations, but it's doing it in, oh, and then we use a deep fake of my voice. So it's like this weird version of me kind of speaking weird versions of meditations. It's not very meditative. It is actually kind of meditative, but it's more unsettling. Dark mindfulness. I think this is a whole new genre that you can invent. So then what we did was we started, I was like, well, what are the kids? Like, what really makes me calm?

I was like, you know what? I grew up in this weird corporate world. Like, I just like, I hate to say it. I love products. I love beauty counters. I love like perfumes and brands and like Kim Kardashian. And so we started feeding at Kim Kardashian's Instagram, you know, just weird like product lists and all this stuff. And it started making these things that were just like, Apple.

Amazon. And it's so calming. And I was like, and you know, I'm just like, hey girls, like, it's a great Saturday. Like, just this weird amalgamation of like modernity, like internet, femininity, like relaxation thing. I'm sure it's individual, right? I'm sure that some people would react far. Some people hate it. Right. No, I think some people will probably hate it. And some people mindfulness, you know, the sort of good old Western white people meditation is great. And if it helps them, I'm all for it. It's technically not white people meditate. But it's like weird white appropriation of, I don't know, Buddhism or whatever the hell it is. But like you say, once you imply, you know, once it's on an app.

Once it's on an app, it's like, yeah, it's officially some weird. I feel like at that point the perversion is so extreme that. But if it works for people, I'm still all for. No, but that's, yeah, I love it. I use it all the time. Okay, good. Every morning I'm opening my stupid app and, like, doing my stupid counting. But your self-knowledge is such that you know that it's kind of perverse.

But no, I'm just embarrassed. Yeah, no, I'm just embarrassed. Like, people come in and people are like, I'm just, yeah, I want to be able to meditate in front of other people. Well, do I need to meditate in front of, I'll stop talking. Okay. But I want to go back to this AI thing because, you know, the thing that I keep coming back to is the importance for our minds of being in our bodies, right? And I've talked with people on the podcast about the embodiment of intelligence and so forth. And I think that one thing that current attempts at AI are really missing is that embodiment. Like, AIs don't get hungry. They don't get sleepy. I, but see,

I don't think that's relevant. I think it's super relevant. Okay. I mean, I just don't think, why does the AI need to be like us. And also, I think you'll be able to emulate that. Like, I just feel like we'll be able to write programs that's possible. That's possible. We just need to crack what that is exactly. In principle, we can emulate anything. That I'm all in favor of. But in practice, I'm not sure that they're trying that much. I don't think they're trying that. Well, it's, doesn't seem super practical because those are the things that inhibit us to an extent. Well, but you need motivation, right? They motivate us also. True. I mean, I feel like the AI will be motivated, motivated by

true I mean interesting okay motivation wow AI's don't get bored yeah but see it's not good I think it'll be motivated by not being bored I mean I guess the motivation is the key of whether it's going to be evil or not well there's yeah motivation for what

goal of course is an important question but the existence of motivation at all yeah I can turn on my computer and not touch any keys and it will not complain but I mean I feel like it's going to want to know like the nature of the universe I don't think so I think it'll just sit there and whatever state it's in until the command is given to it.

Unless we give it a motivation. Unless, you know, again, I'm... But once it's self-aware, I think there's something inherently motivating about being self-aware. I'm not so sure. I think that, I mean, I'm very happy to be wrong about this. Not an expert, right? I'm not an expert either. I'm literally just saying stuff I've never even said before until we're making it up.

But I think... No, I mean, I think about just the body is something, you know, our bodies, unless we feed and breathe and so forth, they decay. They go away. We are kept in our homeostasis by inputs from the outside world. But that doesn't motivate you to do, like, physics. It's part of it. It's part of it. You know, I think that evolution didn't train us to do physics, as we were talking about before the podcast.

But it trained us to do other things, and those other things sort of bleed over. And as spinoffs, we are curious about the universe and we ended up doing physics. But art making, like, what purpose does that serve? Well, I guess it does serve? What do you think? Yeah, I should ask you. What purpose does it serve? I guess it makes us happy.

I also do think, like, science fiction and stuff leads to science. Yeah, that's absolutely true. It's like, you know, it's like, it's like an interaction. Yeah. But what about, I mean, what about art? I mean, so if I vaguely know the biography, you didn't grow up as a musical prodigy. No. Definitely not.

But you stumbled across it. Yeah, I was actually in neuroscience at McGill. Okay. And we had to learn logic to do like, yeah, I don't know, make some like tones or something. like, okay, like, go home and then come back on Monday, like, and with like a snippet of something musical to prove you learned this program. Okay, but for a neuroscience class, not for a music class. Yeah, so like some generate tones and various things or whatever.

And so I, like, went home and just like made an EP because I was just like, wow, so fun. Also free software. Yeah. Yes. And then I basically just had, it's so funny because people are like, you know, like, oh, not that it was like easy, but people, like basically my first music kind of went viral. So it was just, I, like, definitely didn't, like, work for it my whole life. I just, like, definitely got super lucky.

Yep. So, yeah, sometimes, well. With no musical, and then I had to very quickly learn music very fast in front of a lot of people. Right. Very intense. So what does that mean learning music? Do you learn, like, to play instruments and things? Yeah.

Music theory, all that stuff? I didn't learn music theory. A circle of fifths? I don't know the circle of fifths. Just to, like, play live and stuff, you just have to be good at doing stuff. Oh, my God, I better learn. So really the practice, the, you know, practical. Yeah, and in production.

My first stuff was very low fidelity. I had to very quickly learn about how to be a good producer and make things sound engineering, I guess. And so for most of your songs, you have written the music, you've played the instruments to whatever extent that is, wrote the lyrics, did the singing and did the producing. That's a lot of work, it sounds like. It's fun, though. Which is the most fun part? Which is the most fun part? I mean, probably the producing, because it's like weird world building, you know?

Yeah. Make some weird. So for those who are, again, not experts, like, what does it mean to be producing music in the digital age? Is it like just modifying sounds, mixing tracks together, deciding what to include and not? Yeah, basically. It's like cyber-composing. Okay. You know, you're just like, you've got like a weird paint graph in front of you that is the song and you just sort of like fiddle it together and like put compressors and EQ and effects on things and kind of make it fall together.

But you clearly need to know what the words like. compressor and EQ mean. You don't, you, you can, I kind of just figured it out. Like, I was just like, I'll just press these buttons to like, get it. Uh-huh. Okay. Kind of thing, you know, and then you eventually just fall into it, you know, it's like, I don't know. And I'm sure people would be different levels of skill at it, but it does sound, I mean, your story is a good one in the sense that there might be other people out there who, if they were exposed to these tools, could really make music other people liked. I mean, the one nice thing about production is like, I mean, you do need to know things, but you don't really need to know.

I mean, it's like the piano. If you sit down on a piano and you press a key, like, it kind of sounds just nice. Like, there's sort of this inherent niceness to it, and you can kind of like deduce how to make it nice. Right. Like, you just like... I mean, hundreds of years of practice to make pianos that sound nice, right? I mean, yeah, yeah. So it's...

Like, we're blessed with that. The tool set, there's a wonderful tool set available. So, and, you know, like, and so you just need to figure out how to, like, drive the tool set. You know. And, yeah. So, yeah. When you're performing live, are there people playing instruments, or is it you at a keyboard? It's kind of both.

We're running certain things off Ableton. Okay. And then we're like triggering. I'm like triggering things off Ableton and blah, blah, blah. So there's a little dynamic back and forth where things are happening by your choice in real time. It's a mix of being actually doing things and certain things running off Ableton. But I used to actually do everything like live loop. But that's when you're like playing in front of 50,000 people and you're trying to live loop something and you fuck something up or like one weird sound.

You just don't want to do that. I definitely learn the hard way not to do that. I can believe that. I go around giving talks about quantum mechanics, and I had this one little demo that I couldn't do on my laptop, only on my phone. Yeah. So I had to plug my phone into the computer, into the LED projector, whatever, and even that amount of live ability to fail was too stressful for me.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's just, I mean, and also the other thing, I think live music is going to be obsolete soon. You know, one of the things I like about the digital age is like, well, maybe this is bad. But as a performer, like, I hate the potential of failure in front of a giant audience. It's like, you know, and so you look at, like, DJs get paid more than real musicians. Okay, I don't know this. And it's much cheaper. And it's much cheaper.

Like, it's just like actually, you know, it's kind of like Instagram or whatever. Like, people are actually just gravitating towards the clean, like, finished, like fake world. You know, everyone wants to be in the simulation. Like, they don't actually want the real world. Like, even if they think they do and everyone's like, yeah, cool, live music. Like, if you actually look at, like, actual, like, numbers of things, like, everyone's gravitating towards, like, the shimmery, like, perfected Photoshop world. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, certainly Instagram and so forth is pushing us in that direction. But isn't there also, like, if I look on YouTube or whatever, or even podcasts, you know, my podcast is rather less produced than an NPR radio show, right? And there's still a lot of room there for sort of messy, kind of non-professional things. I feel like your guests are weirdly eloquent, though. Well, that's true. I do try to peek people. I learn that the hard way, you know. Well, I feel like I'm giving you probably a rough time right now. No, not at all. You don't think you're going to have to edit it? I feel you're going to have to edit this like crazy.

No, I'm not adding it at all. This is what you're going to sound like. No, because the people who are harder to have as podcast guests are the ones who just give one sentence answers to everything. Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure, definitely. You want people who can expound on who go, oh, yeah, I never thought of that. Let's go there, right? That's what makes a great podcast guest in all ways. I've noticed your podcast guests never say, they're not like, like, like, like, I'm just like, oh, yeah, like, you know, like whatever, man, like what, I was like, that was just stressing me out on the way here. I was like, man, how am I going to. You want to edit all the likes? No, you won't be able to do that.

This is probably already been like 4,000. Well, I think, you know, part of the, part of the reason I was very happy to have you on the show, I mean, there's interesting things I want to talk about, but also it's an experiment, right? Like, it's a different kind of guest. And I just love that. I want to be experimenting. I don't ever want to like fall into the rudder doing the same thing. Cool. That's how I feel about things generally?

Yeah. So how would you say your music has evolved? I mean, is it different now than when you're at McGill? Oh, yeah. I'm sure the answers, yes, but. Oh, yeah. Well, I went through like, um, like I, so my first album, super weird, super psychedelic, just crazy. When I look back at the time, I was like, wow, I was just totally unhinged, psychotic, crazy person.

Like, I was so crazy at the time. I didn't realize music had lyrics. I thought no one was ever saying anything. I thought everyone was just going like, love it. Blah, blah, blah. Okay. So you were not even a huge music fan. No, I was a huge music fan, but I was just, I think maybe, like, I think I have some, like, learning disabilities and stuff.

Like, it was very jarring. I never watched TV. I didn't have the internet. No MTV, yeah. I was just, like, super weird in my world. And, you know, I just thought I was making, like, weird, like, pop, like, Britney Spears, like, oh, yeah, it's a super pop mainstream sound. Like. You were trying to sell out this art you could.

I was, like, totally delusion. about what I was actually making. And then, you know, and then there was this very jarring thing of everyone being like, oh, yeah, but, you know, it's cute, but she, you know, she won't actually be able to, like, grow it up or, like, go, da, da, da, da, like. You know, people were just really worrying about how I was going to, like, expand the thing and make it not just, like, this one-time kind of, like, funny thing. And then so I had to, like, really hone my skills.

So my last album was, like, I don't want to say it's normal because it's not, but it was really a lot of like proving myself. Yeah, absolutely. Production is like a very male-dominated kind of sport too. So I just wanted to make some, make it clear that I can like play with the boys or whatever. Yeah,

you can play the game in their way. You know, their game, you know, it's like there's, you know, there's a level of normalcy to, like, playing the game, you have to like actually abide by the rules a little bit. So there's a bit more rule abiding in that album than I would have liked, but I just wanted to shut up the like.

Well, but also I think, I mean, I've never done anything like music, but for writing books or for doing physics or whatever, learning what the rules are so that you can break them. Exactly. Exactly. It's hugely helpful. And now I'm back into major breaking. Yeah, I'm back to break it.

Because, you know, now it's like I've like done my thing, so it's like no one's going to be like, oh, yeah, but can she really make a, like, a real song? Yeah, right. So the previous album was Art Angels? Yes. Right? So what are your albums for the people out there? Well, I have two albums that no one's heard of called Getty Primes, which is like a Dune concept album.

If I've known I would have been. Why isn't that box office? I don't know. There's certain people who would love that. It's insane. It's like the insane ravings of a madman. And then another album called Halfaxa, which is just a word I made up. I didn't have fans at this point.

I was just making stuff. But these are things we can get on iTunes or whatever? Yeah. The internet. Okay. And then my quote unquote breakout album is called Visions. And then I made this other album Art Angels after that. Yep.

Which is kind of my actual breakout album. Because the first was like indie breakout. And then like last album was like festival. big, you know, more like, okay, I'm like... 50,000 people in the audience. Or, like, I can, like, you know, like, I'm not, like, actively stress it. Like, Vision's era, I was still like, okay, rent the fuck, ah. You know, like, and now I'm like, okay, I can, like, I'm, like, building a studio.

I'm, like, living my life. And now I'm just in my zone. Yeah. I want to pause to talk about pretty litter cat litter. Now, later on in this very podcast, I will tease people who have been teasing me for having cat litter advertisements. in the Mindscape podcast. But look, if you have cats, you know how important it is to have the best kitty litter you can possibly have. And pretty litter is my favorite. I really think it works really

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Good. Yes. So the new album is called? It's called Miss Anthropocene. I like it. Yeah. Explain, unpack the layers of meaning there. It's a funny title.

Well, it's meant to be extremely provocative, particularly to my fan base. It's like Miss Universe, but Miss Anthropocene. Just everything that, like, beauty pageants. But I want to go, I want to get into, like, extremely psychedelic beauty pageants. Okay. I'm actually obsessed with beauty pageants. I love, like, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Like, I feel like this stuff is great.

It just needs to get way crazier. I mean, what is it that you love about it? I just not. I mean, everyone just loves beautiful women and a parade of beautiful women. And, like, the weird, but, like, Miss Universe and stuff where they have to answer the questions. and like, it's just so funny. Like, it's like... The artificiality of it, kind of.

The, I mean, it's all... It's sort of like this weird attempt it to achieve, like, female perfection in this weird way that, like, super... Yeah, I don't know. Like, I mean, what I really think is that we're very close to, like, a ready player one type of existence. And so I'm imagining, like, the Ready Player One Miss Universe.

Like, where you can have, like, elf ears and giant eyes and, like... We have to be close to that, right? A tale. and, like, be in a Gundam. Well, are you imagining just, like, a virtual reality? Yeah, like VR, VR chat. They must have that. Is there no virtual reality Miss Universe?

They have, no, which I really want, I really want to make misanthropy in the experimental beauty pageant. Yeah, okay. But anyway, and then Miss Anthrop, it's also, like, misanthrope and, and thrott. I was very sad when I made this record. I'm now, I don't know, like, more. I actually, but I was basically trying to make, like, goddess of climate change kind of thing.

Like, I was, like, who is, like, the queen of climate change? Like, who, like, loves. like loves climate change. She wants the, who's like the Hades of climate change? Yeah. You know, like just the sickest demon. So the one in other words causing climate change, really is rooting for it, not fighting against it. Just the embodiment of it. You know, I, like, I miss polytheism. I feel like polytheism was really cool. I feel like it was healing for people. It's like, if you like the god of war, you can just go like, you know, like my son died, but he died for you and like, whatever. You know, it makes more sense. It makes more sense. Yeah, the stories are

great. And, you know, it's just like, I was like, well, who are the new gods? Because we all this new stuff. We have all plastic and pollution and like, you know, like plastic surgery and social media, like the new gods like sounds sick. Like they sound like, you know, like the Sailor Scouts, like the D-Sick demons. So that's kind of like where

my weird imagination has been going. All right. And so is, I mean, not to make it sound too stuffy, is this a concept album around that kind of idea? I guess so. Okay. I hate the word concept album. I know. That's why you. But it's I mean, I always just start with the visual and then I work backwards. Yeah, okay.

Like, so, you know, I'm just trying to think of the sickest visual. It's just taking all these things like climate change and beauty pageants and trying to make them something that I've, like, fun. But so you mentioned that in some sense you were not happy when you're making this album? And did that go into, like, you want to, like, get your frustrations out by imagining that you were embodying climate change? I mean, it's just when I made the album, the album's actually pretty old. I'm kind of on, like, a bunch of new stuff since the album. But there's, like, a bunch of weird stuff happened. and actually my manager passed away and stuff.

So I never actually put it out. Okay. But it was like kind of before I started making a lot of it, like, right before people kind of like got woke. You know, I feel like in the last few years, people just, they got woke. Like, they suddenly care about climate change. And so I was just really depressed. I was like, we're toast. You know, that was kind of like where I was that.

So we agree the climate change is bad. Yeah. Well, I don't know if I should. Can I say that? Some of my iTunes reviewers are mad that I think climate change is bad. But I'm going to stick by that. It's an official mindscape position that climate change is bad. And we should try to fix it if we can.

Yeah. So you're on board with that. Yeah. I mean, well, the argument of the album is kind of that climate change is good,

but with the purpose of being provocative, bent. Little ironic maybe, like, it's not even I'm just like, make us think. I just love villainy.

Like, I don't care about Harry Potter. I like Voldemort. Like, you know, it's like I don't care about Batman. Like, people actually care about the Joker and Harvey Quinn.

That's like why suicide squad is, yeah, everyone likes Kylo Ren, like, you know, the things people actually like is the antagonist. That's what's actually interesting to people. So it's a study in villainy, I guess. And like, you know, because it's just...

And the lyrics reflect, right? Yeah. Okay. Why don't we, we can play a clip from your latest tune. What is this called? This one's called So Heavy or So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth. So Heavy I fell through the Earth. Yeah.

So it's interesting, I bit my tongue when you said it, but I'll confess the first time I heard this song. Yes. I thought that you weren't singing words. Yeah. Well, I do actually have a speech impediment. No, but it was just a cheap little speaker. And it just all say it seems.

It seemed like this sort of, there was a tune and a melody, but it's more atmospheric. Yes. Yes. I mean, I don't sing very, I don't enunciate very well. This is why I hate one people. Your voice is very beautiful. But this is why when people call me a singer, like, oh, singer Grimes, it's like, I'm actually not very good at singing. And people can't understand what my lisp is really bad.

Like, no one can understand what I'm saying. People famously can't understand what I'm saying. Okay. I've not yet had problems yet. But, I mean, do you play with that when you're producing? sing? I mean, could you make yourself sound like Barry White if you wanted to? Yeah, I mean, I could if I really wanted to. Okay.

But I think people would react badly. I mean, you can kind of make vocal sound like anything. Like anything. Right. Right. Right. You know. But so was it a conscious choice for this song to make it more backgroundy, ambient? I kind of wanted this like cyber ennya thing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You know, yeah. Um, yeah. So. And how does that fit in? I mean, I don't know. That's the only song from the album I've heard, I guess, unless violence is also on the album. R violence on the album. Vionance came way at the end.

It was actually supposed to be for my next album, but, like, this stuff's a bit older, so I was just needed to put out something. So do you have, like, a bunch of stuff on hard drives that could be many albums? Yeah, a bunch of stuff on hard drives. Although it's not good to tell people that because then they demand the release. And then they keep demand. Like, people are still on, like, I mentioned some track like six years ago, and people still constantly tweeted, like, every single day that release, release, release.

And I'm like, oh, my God. I'm not going to release. Well, do you, is it because you want to improve it or you just didn't like that one or why don't you release things? The difference between a demo to a song is a lot of work. Yeah, okay. And, you know, so if you're not into the song anymore, it's very hard to motivate yourself to do that. Oh, it's like writing a physics paper sometimes, easy to start, sometimes very hard to finish. It's very hard to, the difference between, I might add the, before I died, is release all the demos or something, but.

Okay, yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I teach my students this, or I tell my students to teach themselves because I'm very bad at being a finisher. Yes. You know, you don't get credit for the things, the half-written papers that are lying in your files somewhere. No, it's a really, really hard to finish things. And there must be a business aspect too, right? There must be people who are like, you know, we need some product. Yes, such as the album.

All right. They're here in the room, folks. Yeah, my manager. They're very friendly. Don't worry. Yeah. Are you happy with the album? Oh, I think it's my best word for sure.

Okay, cool. Do you think that every album has been better than every previous one? Yes. Okay. So there's progress going on. Hopefully there's progress going on. And is, I mean, do you think it's because your skills are better or you're in a better place or you're more creative? Well, this one, as we were saying, it's like a confidence of, my skills are much better, but I can go back to being, you know, like now that I know the rules, I can break them.

Right. So, and that helps you be a little bit more authentic, true to yourself a little bit more. It sounds less like other music. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Which is like my ultimate goal is to make things that haven't been made before. Yeah.

Right, any creative person wants to do that. Yes, yeah. And you can't do it entirely. Obviously, you're influenced by things, right? I mean, do you have favorite influences? No. No? Okay.

Why do I feel like that's a boring question for musicians? Because like, who cares? Will anyone get anything out of it if I say my influences? I bet like no one benefits. Yeah, it's probably more easier to misunderstand than to actually convey insight that way. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's just because the influences aren't even relevant.

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. That's so weird. That's a loaded. I won't go down. On Wikipedia. You know, like my web page has a little sidebar where it says who my influences are.

Who are your influences? I don't know. I have no idea who. Mine too. And it says weird. There's literally people might influence also on Wikipedia that I've never heard of. Point blank. I'm like, what is this?

Well, I guess so the better way to say it is, you know, none of us grew up on a desert island isolated from the world. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. We live within this mosaic of stuff. Yes. We might not even know where the influences are. Yes. Well, it's like I try to get influences from like, for example, like so there's guys making these programs who you use. use, you know, like, like, or a plug-ins that you use that, like, generate sound and generate

sense and stuff. And, like, I try to, like, you know, for example, be influenced by them, be like, okay, so, like, these guys are, like, great engineers. They spent all this time building these weird tools. How far can I push this tool and, like, make that the core of the thing that I'm trying to build? You know, it's like, how can I, because they're engineer, you know, they're engineers. And so they're making, like, very interesting stuff, like, things that, like, process

sound in ways that have never been, it's never been done. So I'm like, you know, one of the things I like to do is, like, figure out, like, what can I make of this pure kind of on it's like not put in the artistic con in an artistic context it's just like shit that can be done yeah how do I take these new instruments and you know I mean it's a you know I have guitarist friends who are gearheads right like the latest little wrinkle in guitar whatever this is the software version of that right the audio engineering version of that well you can do things in software and stuff that you can't do you know you can like take waveforms and like put them together in super crazy way you can do you can do.

You can do, I mean, maybe hardware can do all the same processing. I don't know. But there's just really cool stuff when there's guys just writing programs that can, like... Do you think even apart from, like, AI being creative, do you think that we're in a period of rapid development of what people can do? I think we're in a super creative. I think we're in one of the great art phases of humanity. And I think we won't even realize it yet until, yeah, a bit later. But both because of, like, how rapidly the tools are developing, but also because of the extreme democratization of,

these tools. I feel like it's pretty much never, it's only, it hasn't been everyone making music since probably like the ancient kind of times. Right. You know, so it's like we're returning to this like place where everybody can make music. And everybody has like pretty advanced tools at their fingertips.

And I don't know, it's like I think that's probably pretty good for the. And you also do, you know, visual art, right? You do the album covers. Yep. And you're into fashion. Do you design fashion at all? I do design.

I'm actually working on digital fashion. I don't know what that means. I think regular, you know, there's all these fast fashion, all this stuff, you know, like. Vaguely I know about it. It's not really. So, like, Fashion Nova or like H&M, you can go buy something that's, like, cheap and crappy for, like, 30 bucks that's just going to break really fast and go in the landfill. It's kind of for Instagram, right? Okay.

So it's like, right now Instagram can, like, map your face and you can do, like, cool filters. I see where this is going. You know, I think, like, we'll probably, we'll be very soon to, like, just having really great, like, you know, body mapping. And then you could just, like, go spend two bucks by a dress, like, like, you know, wear it and like and there's no waste it's not bad for the environment you can get something you can get like hokotour you can get like beautiful things that you could never afford you know like i think it'll really revolutionize fashion and then also as i was saying once we're all avatars then people are going to need clothes for their avatars yeah you know right right and i wonder this makes me think about

the where we're going to go with this because we haven't gone anywhere near where we can you know i don't know Did you ever see Tron or Tron Legacy, the movie? I have not seen Tron, and this is a constant thing that gets brought up very regularly with me. But I should really see it. I was a science advisor for Tron Legacy, the recent one. And it was fine. It was a good movie, but it was not great. The first one was in some sense a crappy movie that was really groundbreaking. It was the first movie to really be heavily CGI.

Wow, okay, cool. And the story and everything weren't great, but it was extremely influential. Whereas I thought that the flaw of the second one was, you know, we're good at CGI now. Yeah. And they just did all the CGI they did in the old movie, but way better. It wasn't groundbreaking. They did try to do something different. The one they also about why film sucks right now is just this weird.

It's so expensive to make films. Everyone's just repeating and making remakes and like just doing more expensive versions of things they did before, which is like really weird and sad. And it's weird that films, cinema specifically, is like stuck in this mode when almost every other art form is like blasting off. Well, maybe it's because it's just a little bit too expensive to be this DIY in that world, right, as compared to music or visual art or whatever. Although I do think, like, even the new iPhones and stuff, like the camera capabilities, still though you need actor, still, you know, music, you make it alone in a room,

like a movie still need at least a bunch of people, like minimum acting. But, you know, we'll get, yeah. Yeah, we can, I can certainly imagine having software where you, you know, you type in, well, I want this actor to have these emotions. Oh, you probably just get deep fakes of actors and have them. Sure. Also do that. Are you just weird renders of actors?

Oh, wow. Then you could make your own movie. Or you could fix the old movies. Just write what everyone says and how they act and just like let them generate. This is how the Fentermanes should have been. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. People do that. So, yeah, I mean, art is just moving really, really quickly. I mean, do you have a vision for the future of art? I know this sounds too big. but, you know, do you, let's put it this way. How much of your approach to art is simply being a practitioner versus sort of theorizing what it's all about?

A lot of it for me is theorizing what it's all about and where it's going to go because that's kind of where, like, I don't know, like I call it like social media sci-fi or whatever, like, you know, just trying to use the tools available to make the most kind of like groundbreaking ideas or whatever, like, you know, not just in music or whatever. There aren't many guarantees in life. Your energy won't always show up, your genes won't always fit, but I promise you this.

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No, I would like to move on from music. Well, actually probably, but like more casually. Okay. Not as my main, you know, yeah. Like, I mean, one thing we're doing right now is we just build an avatar and we're about to, I'm about to like kill myself in transition. So one thing I'm really, I've been deep diving on recently is I really think the human psyche is splitting into two parts.

Okay. Obviously. You know, it's like everyone has, and I think this is causing people a lot of problems. Obviously, you say, yeah, okay. Yeah, but like, well, no, but it's like we all, we have an online life and we're spending, like, hours. And it's like. Guilty.

And our sense of self. I mean, the way most people know you is online. Yeah. I quote unquote, knew you before I met you because I knew your digital self. And like. And I actually make a sort of conscious decision to make my digital self pretty close to my real but not exactly. Which I remarked upon meeting you because a lot of people don't.

I was like, wow, you sound exactly. Like, I was, like, tripped out. I was like, I feel like we're in the podcast. The podcast has already started. I couldn't take it. Your voice even sounded like compressed or something. Like, I was like, totally. That's a model.

I got, like, kind of tripped out, actually. I had like a brief psychedelic break when we met. Covered up well. Really, I think I like screamed and, like, grab my head. But, like, you know, it's like, I think we are not obviously prepared, emotionally prepared for this. And people are also, they don't realize it's happening. So they're the fight between their digital self and their real self.

You know, we see all these girls getting classic surgery because they're like, I don't, my face doesn't look like my face through the filter. And it's like, what we actually need to accept is that we have two selves now. Right. If you are actively online in any capacity, that is a separate entity. And like these, you know, it's like. And as an artist, you're taking, making use of that in a way that I am choosing not to and really constructing things online. Yeah. Well, what I want to do is like for, so another part of this is like, because I sing and dance, dance, people really, you know, undervalue or forget, like, most people would describe me as a singer, which is probably the last way I would describe myself, you know.

And so, like, I, what I want to do is physically separate my digital self and my real self and have my real self kind of like step back, you know, start wearing a suit. Nice. Yeah. And just like, you know, and just be like, I'm the mastermind and now the dancing puppet is this avatar of me that we are, we just finished it yesterday. Well, I mean, we still need to do hair and we're still working on certain. We're fine Yeah, so it's my digital self We scanned my body

Okay We made like a perfect scan of me Then we augmented it So this is just leaning into the fact That everyone has a separate online persona Well and it's like she can do She can be on Instagram She can be on Twitter

She can say things I can't even say Because it's not even the real me But it is the real me But it's like Like I feel so like people are always getting mad at me I'm always in controversies And getting cancelled and all this shit And it's the impact of getting cancelled

And stuff It hurts you're like ah I'm just like, I wake up and I'm like, oh, God, did I do something again? You know, and it's just like I would love to untether my digital self and my real self, so I don't have to go through this suffering of people misunderstanding, because it's like a weird avatar of me. It's not my whole personality, and they just get a weird misplaced soundbite and freak out. And this happens to a lot of people, and a lot of people have a lot of pain from being misunderstood

because people, they get a tiny sliver of you, they make an assumption about your whole self. And there's no way to have the complexity of your whole self in your digital avatar. I remember there was a insight that I got as a college sophomore from an English teacher. We were reading Pirandello, six characters in search of an author, I think. That sounds like. I just love the poetry of that title, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Well, so what he talked about was, I'm going to mangle it for all the English majors out there, I apologize. But, you know, he started talking about how whenever we go through life, we're all wearing different masks depending on the situation or whatever.

And what I, and I think all my classmates thought he was going to go for was the sort of Pablam suggestion, but we shouldn't wear these masks. We should be our true authentic selves. But what he actually went for was, you know, wear those masks proudly. Like, wear the right masks and, you know, be aware of what you're doing. Well, the other thing is, it's like we are contextual beings. Like, my personality is actually different with different people. You know what I mean? And I think everyone's. I think everyone is. I think everyone is. And it's like, you know, I think people are always kind of like, oh, that's inauthentic or. But I think it is authentic. You know, it's a survival mechanism. And I think it's good to break out of brain cycles. Like if you're always the same, if you've set ideas about yourself, your same neural pathway again, again, again, like, you know, it's like a path to Alzheimer's, like, you know.

And this might be your neuroscience training talking, right? Because brains are not these little unified egos. I love breaking my neural path. I love just like, oh, like when I... There's a lot of modules in there fighting with each other. When I find something abrasive, like creatively, I'll like dive right in. Because I'm like, if I hear new music and I'm like, Every time I go, oh, the fucking kids today, that I'm like, well, I'm listening to this person's album.

Like, we're deep diving. We're deep diving until I like it. And I usually do come to like it and, you know, realize why. And then, you know, I think, and then I like break out of my path. And then I'm like, I feel. I always wonder, you know, when people who I know and like or admire or whatever love something and I don't. Like I figure, like, what am I doing wrong, right? Like, even if I'm not going to love it at the end of the day, I want to know why they love it.

Yes. When I get it. No, I think that's really, really important, like, to just, like, constantly, like, never think that, like, all the new art is bad. Like, it might not be tonally your vibe, but if something's popular. That's okay, right. If something's popular, there's a reason. It's probably good. That's right.

Okay. Digital Avatar. Anyway, yeah. So we're, like, the digital avatar is about to take over my social media and everything, which is going to be amazing because I'll be so. Free, free less. So, it's just, like, clothes are expensive. photo shoots are expensive Fly to New York

Like all this stuff Like music videos I'm like oh And music videos are like shitty for the environment Like I'm like We have to have bottled water for everybody And we have to like build this thing

That's just gonna go into the trash Like build a set It's gonna go in the trash Repaint a bunch of chemicals Like ugh You know it's like We shouldn't be doing that in the real world Doing the machine yeah

Like we should you know And it's like Especially because they're what you're literally Creating is something digital Right It's a video Yeah it's just a video And it's like

So does your avatar of a name? I think we're going to call it war nymph. War nymph, okay, excellent. The incongruity there. But it might change. Okay. But, yeah, so like war being her first name.

And so how, is there going to be like an announcement or how are we going to know that this is now an avatar and it's not you? Oh, because it's not your physical embodiment. Do you want to see what she looks like? Well, in a podcast, I can. But if you, by the time we publish the podcast, maybe there's an image I can share. She's clearly digital. Okay. But like, yeah, so we just, we just need to find ways.

I mean, at first we will co-interact and then, I mean, I'm not going to, like, totally disappear, but, like, you know. Sure. No, you, but she can just be doing stuff too. And, yeah, no, I, like, I do think it has, like, a distinct personality. I mean, we have, you know, like, we made her elf ears. I would actually get the elf ear surgery, but probably unwise. Probably unwise. Well, I'm a musician.

Like, if something fucks up, it could be really bad. That's true. That's why Freddie Mercury never fixed his teeth. Yeah. So we could sing. Yeah. But, you know, look, authors, Ian Dund. Banks wrote straight novels without his middle initial, and then he wrote science fiction novels

with his middle initial, right? He had two different personas. He wasn't trying to hide it, obviously, right? But he's like, here's my literary fiction, here's my science fiction. But I think even just your sense of self, like if you break your sense of self, you can just be so much more creative. Like we get stuck in our ways. Like, and one thing about the internet, the internet's all about identity and like, you know, like, who am I and like getting used to who I am. And like, these are my people and this is, you know, this is what I relate to. And it's like. Your tribe and. Yeah. Like, and I, like, like, I feel like it's good to kind of shake yourself out of that.

Yeah. You know, and, and, like, vibe into having, like, a different. Okay, but so the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the hope sounds like, it will, it will be freeing for your regular self to have the avatar. So, this is an experiment. Free. We're going to see if it works. Well, yeah, and, and, and clarifying, like, what I actually do. Okay.

You know, because it's like, when I see, like, Beyonce, I'm like, I think people think I'm like, like, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm trying to be a singer, like, get really good at dancing, get really good at singing and that's sort of the platonic ideal of what I do. But actually, like, what I do, like, compose and engineer and write and make, you know, like, I want to do like, you know, also like more weird theoretical stuff. Like the singing and dancing, I just, like, couldn't find another girl and I didn't have enough money to pay a girl at the time. To do the singing and dancing. I started, also you don't want to control someone's life. Well, then it's milly-vinilly, right? Well, but then the thing is that you end up being your own milly-vanilly. Yeah.

And like what conceptually this weird hole I've been going down is like, man, like, I feel like I'm the Phil Spector to myself. Like I'm just like every day like, oh, like get back on the stage. Like, oh, like put on the lipstick, put on the mascara. Like get it. Like, oh. And it's like this torturous thing of like being something I'm not in the service of myself. It got really weird.

But part of that is just sort of reaching a certain level of success, right? where you've been striving for this your whole life, and then suddenly your life is not what you expected it to be, and you're kind of overworked and stressed, and that might be true for lots of people. True. Yeah, no, I think that's true, which is why people should get digital avatars.

Well, I absolutely believe this might be something. I mean, is there Plains Devil's Advocate? Is there a downside that people feel less restrained to be, you know, polite and constructive if they're a digital self? They already do online. It's already past that. And it's already easy, very easy. If you want to be mad, make a troll account.

But another thing I think is that, troll accounts are like healthy. Like, I have many troll accounts on which I do a lot of trolling. And it's... So what's your definition of trolling in this sense? Like I just, you know, my enemies, I'll go say mean things to them. Okay. From an anonymous accounts. Yeah. And then I feel so much better afterwards. I only have one account, well, one account that we count as a troll account, but it's really not. It's just my politics account because my regular Twitter account, I don't mind talking about politics, but I want to be constructive. I want to, like, do good things.

But other times I just want to say, like, this is stupid what's happening. And so I have a separate account for that. And it is therapeutic. Like, not, not, because everyone else can do that. There's nothing that I'm adding to the conversation. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, once you do it, you get so much less pain from other people because you're like,

oh. Oh, that's them. You know, like, I'm not actually this abrasive at all. You know, I don't even necessarily think these things. You know, it's just like, I'm like, it's been much easier for me to deal with trolls once I started trolling. Well, but this is, this is the neuroscience and psychology of this are fascinating, right? Because human beings are not unified. We are messy streams of consciousness of different things bubbling up. And maybe the insight is the technology is giving voice to all

these different parts of ourselves. But I think, I mean, right now it does seem like it's mostly impacting people negatively, which is scary. I just don't know if it has to, you know? Like, I do think like, there's obviously elements in all of this where I'm like, okay, like if we could like distilled this, we could make it positive. We could like kill this part. We could make it positive. You know, maybe that I might be wrong. This will be part of your new mindfulness app. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe everyone just needs a mindfulness app. Well, I mean, so that's an interesting thing. Do you think that the digital avatar idea is scalable? Like you could, you could, anyone can do it someday? I think it's inevitable. First of all, I think the technology will get, because right now, like,

when you play a video game, you open a character creation screen and you can like, in a lot of video games, you can customize the character. So it's like, you know, like there will just be better interfaces and more. Like, it'll be like that probably, but like, you know, all encompassing in the future. And you can, I mean, if you've played VR chat, you can kind of. I did second life a little bit. Did you ever do second life? It was one of the earlier VR environments and it was bad because there was no goals, right?

So, I mean, it was, I don't know, admirable because you could build a house and you could have a cat and you could go clothes shopping and whatever. Yeah. But you couldn't win or lose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. lost interest in it. Well, I also think there's like... Which is maybe lessen of some sort.

Like without... I mean, so like if you ever played VR chat, like I went into VR chat for a while and it's like, it was just a nightmare. Like, you know, like you talk and everyone was like, a woman in the VR chat? And then they're just like all these weird dudes chasing me around.

And I was like, maybe the goal, maybe goals like morally align people, you know? Like maybe like goal, like it's like the goal, the fact that there's just no goal and there's just a bunch of people standing here creates this incredibly predatory environment. So there's no incentive for them to be nice, basically, or to be even considerate? Yeah, well, because there's no, yeah, I, like, I don't know why, but it, it was, like, a

weird, rapey, scary. Like, I went away to get some food and I came back and they'd all been drawing dicks all over my character. Like, it was just, it was, like, really, like, kind of, like, aggressive, like, rapey vibe. This is very recently or back in the day? Well, like four months ago, when are we getting? Okay, that's pretty recent. Yeah, let's call that pretty recent. Wow. Did they know it was you? No, no, or it was just some, yeah, just female was enough. It is. Right? Yeah.

And but not that, like, I'm not even making a ethical judgment. I'm just saying, like, obviously in the real world, people don't behave like this. Right. And so, like, what's, although maybe they would, maybe, maybe, maybe in like, fucking ancient realm they did. Maybe. I'm not 100% sure. It's unclear, but. But yeah, I mean, norms and standards of politeness serve a purpose, right?

Yeah. And they can exist in real life, but not online in some ways. Yeah. And there might be a way to make them start existing online. But I don't know because it's like you feel like in order to do that. You have to like maybe make people like sign onto the internet with ID, which feels weird and starts getting into like weird. Well, I talked about this stuff with Corey Doctoro, who is an internet freedom of speech expert. And it's hard.

Like every rule you come up with you can realize, oh, that could be disastrous for this set of people. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should you be able to delete your, you know, direct messages you send to somebody? I think you should definitely be able to. Well, yes. But then people who send harassing emails to other people. can delete the evidence.

Right? So that's what I said. And instantly the exception comes up. Damn. Oh, it's so, yeah, the digital. I mean, we are just not yet prepared. This is why I wonder if we're just an obsolete species and like AI is just the inevitable endpoint.

And we are just this in this in between point where we're way too primitive for the world we've built. And like that, you know, like AI is just an obvious. Like it's just an evolution of humanity. Yeah. And like, you know, we're just cromagnons right now in a in a human world. Well, I mean, maybe this is a good place to sort of bring it all in for a landing. I've heard things like that said before, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're the way for the universe to invent super intelligent machines. Well, I think we are kind of super-per. But, like, just, yeah, there's just an obvious, yeah, like, we're the means by which, like, the universe is just trying to express itself. And as it gets big, it just keeps evolution gets better, better, better. And it's just fast evolution, I guess. But again, I come back to this sort of motivation or goal kind of thing. Like, so Nick Boster wrote this book, Super Intelligence, you know this one?

I haven't read it, but I'm aware of it. Yeah, I haven't read it either, but I own it. And I always wonder, like, what is the definition of intelligence here? Like, it's certainly not the ability to multiply big numbers fast because we already have that, right? Is it the ability to, you know, write a love poem or quantized gravity? I don't know. I think it's a lot of things and they can coexist, too. Like I'm not necessarily of the mind that AI will wipe us out.

I don't know if they even have any motivation too. I feel like that's sort of a weird. Yeah, well, what even counts as motivation is a very strange question. Yeah. But I don't think people have really thought about. I think that we're anthropomorphizing a little bit too much. Yeah, we might be. Yeah.

You know? And I also think, you know, again, my uneducated thoughts here that in addition to AI, there's the whole mind computer interface thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rather than building separate AIs, we're going to modify ourselves. I mean, I really want that. Yeah, that's coming. I think that's coming. Because also then we just Nick Boschner's book right in. Just put it in. You know? Like, okay, but this is, that's the fantasy.

And I wonder if it has any basis in reality. Like, do you have to live through the process of reading it to really get it in? I think if you can imagine it, it's possible. I think anything is technologically possible. Faster than speed of light? I don't know. Maybe not. Fine. I don't know, but maybe. Isn't the speed of light your middle name? Yeah. No, it's my new real name. Okay. You shouldn't think people should be able to violate the speed of light. I mean, but I don't know.

Like, I mean, you can answer this better than me, but like, there's no, like, can we truly trust the laws of physics are actually, like, what they are? No, we can't. So, yeah. So it's like this of all I'm saying is it's just like, I feel like if we can time, there's a lot of time ahead of us. Yeah. Like, I think we'll probably be able to solve anything, really. Like, it's like there's so many things that exist now that just seem like mad. Like the idea of, even like a hundred years ago that, like, working on computers.

like this and just everything right all knowledge at the tip of our fingers it's like literally fucking insane and it's like we're speeding up like exponentially like you know like five years ago like the difference between five years ago now feels like the difference between like world war two in the 80s yeah like so it's like you know so it's like I just feel like it's just going to we're tripping into like this super psycho zone where it's going to are you a singularity person is a singularity is that the idea when like I think you know the idea that the rate of technology logical progress is increasing and at an increasing rate. So it basically hits infinity at some finite time in the future. I mean, I just believe the most fun thing that I can believe in any

given time. Okay. That's a good thing to do. Yeah. You know, it's like, why would I fight against the most fun possible outcome? Do you? Like, because if there's no proof one way or the other, like, like obviously I'm just going to go for the Ian Banks future. But what is your, how do you think about your place in this process? I mean, do you, do you consciously think that you're sort of exploring these boundaries and helping us to get to this new place, or is it just you're riding a wave and having a good time? A bit of both. I think I'm riding a wave more than I think, you know, like, but I am actively striving to not just ride the wave, but I think we're all kind of riding the wave more than we think, but also possibly contributing more than we think. That's fair. We can't help but ride the wave.

We can't help it ride the wave. Yeah. Like I think everything at the end of the day walks away from ego and like self. Like if you look at like ancient Egypt and like and stuff, and stuff, like it ends up just becoming a weird conglomerate of everything altogether and the individuals sort of disappear into this time. Memory-wise, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's like what actually survives, like, is rarely individuals. It's true. It's hard to know what survives.

You know, another thing I tell my graduate students is when they give a seminar, think about what people in the room will remember five years later. Yeah. And they instantly go, like, nothing's going to remember anything five years for now. So why are you given the talk? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's great advice. Is that important to you, how you're,

remembered in the future? It is and it isn't I mean it's more fun and interesting to play the game and try to be remembered but it's not something I'm emotionally attached to. Okay, I think that's a perfect answer and I think I like perfect answers as the way to end.

Okay, cool. Grimes, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Cool. Is there something that we didn't do that you want to do we could add in or? I mean, I just like in the regular press it's like Is there anything? any sort of correspondence of this digital avatar idea back into the real world?

Oh, okay. Let's see if I'm like a fanathinger that way. I mean, I mean one thing we, well, I don't know if this is quite like that. Just say no, but. No, but, you know, since I'm here, I'm going to promote this thing that we're doing. It works, look, it works both ways. I'm very happy to promote. You don't have to promote.

Think of it. Think of it. We're letting people in a different audience know about something that is cool. You could call this the capitalist PostScript. Okay. Concluding capitalist PostScript in a Kierkegaardian mode. Yeah. So we're doing this thing called luxury raving.

Luxury raving. Luxury raving. My brain heard lecturing raving. And I'm like, that sounds awesome. No, we could definitely have lectures. We could definitely have lecturing raving. Lectures here, though. Okay.

You know, which is like, it's called biohack, H-A-Q-Q-U-E. All right, good. You know. Just be good. T.M. And essentially what it is is like, you know, like we're going to have everyone being like inundated with red light. Like, first of all, I think raving is actually, someone just sent me an article. Raving is actually good for your brain.

And like, yeah, like dancing and stuff like builds new neural pathways. It's good for. But for the one or two listeners who are not ravers, like where is this going to happen? Like, do you go to some place, or is this someone sitting in my living room? It's going to happen in Miami, and it's going to be, we're going to have the AI meditations there. Just a bunch. It's kind of like an art installation of like weird, like using the medium of corporate shit to actually just make art that has no value. Like, you know, the AI meditations, I don't even know if they're actual wellness.

It's just like I'm using, we're using the idea of this corporate, the corporate structure that because everyone, we're all, we're stuck in the corporate world. Now we're stuck in, you know, like part of the. being on the internet. I'm selling electric toothbrushes on my podcast and kitty litter. True. Do you sell kitty litter sometimes? Yeah. You know, kitty litter, I have two cats and I love them dearly.

And so I'm like, of course I'm going to sell kitty litter. And that's the one thing that I've been advertising. Okay. Wow. Really? Kitty litter? It's pretty litter. This is a free advertisement for them.

They've invented this kitty litter where when your cat is sick, it turns different colors. Oh, actually, I've heard you say this before. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. There you go. I actually love the podcast ad forum because it. is so different from other ads.

And it's like, and like, like, like, the Casper and stuff, like, there's some that just keep coming back. I'm like, I don't even know what the fuck Casper or Mailchimp is. It's just like, there's these comforting phrases I've heard so many times. Anyway, we're all cheerful capitalists and you're going to be in Miami doing a lecturing, raving. So it's like, it's like ads without being able to purchase things. It's like corporate shit wellness.

It's like, but it's none of it is actually stuff you can, that actually helps you. It's just like engaging in the act of being in a. mandated with, like, wellness, infrastructure and all this weird shit, and it's going to be at a rave. You're being sold stuff that you can't buy. Yeah, I mean, it's just, and it doesn't necessarily benefit. And it's just all, because, like, we're obsessed with all. So that's art.

I mean, that's, like, the definition of art in some sense. Yeah. It's true. It's form. We're just trying. Like, we're trapped in this corporate environment, so how do we make it beautiful? Like, how do we take? Because I, I think, like, ads, it's like a medium.

It's just, like, it's only been used for this one thing. But it's, it's a medium that everyone is a, you know. You know, we look at influences now and they'll do ads and they're not even getting paid because they want to look like they're getting paid and they want to look like they're doing ads because. Oh, I hadn't even known that. Yeah, no. People keep catching people doing like fake ads because that's like the cultural cachet. That's like what's in. Because then you're needed.

You're wanted. Yeah. So I'm like, I'm like, okay, well, this is clearly an art form that people are viving with and like emotionally attached to. So like let's start making it better. And so you're decontextualizing it and making us think about it in a different way. Yeah. Like we want to have like a perfume counter, you know, and just, you know, like just all this stuff. and you can't even buy any of it.

And it's just like the experience of like products and corporate and ah. But like in a way that it's super psychedelic and artful and weird. And like, for example, like the AI meditations. Like I don't know what the purpose of them is. They're not very meditative. They're kind of scary. It's more like science fiction in the form of meditation. It's a little Banksy, you know.

It reminds me of like when he destroyed his. Oh, I see. I won't have a fake Banksy. Oh, that's, yeah. The meta-Banksie. In my house, I'm actually going to, I'm just going to do a banksy. I'm just going to write Banksy and tell people it's Banksy. Like, I don't know what I'm saying this.

No, because it's art. It's pushing the boundaries. I like it. Yeah. So anyway, you can cut this out if you need to. No, I like it. It's going to stay in. Yeah.

Oh, it's an ad. It's an ad. Well, yeah, we should, so I'm wondering whether I should like stick it in organically or just literally put it at the end as a closed script. Literally put it as the corporate. So I've already said goodbye and then we're, yeah. Yeah, no, I think you should make it like, yeah. I can do that.

Okay. I can have fun with it. All right. Shall I hit that we done? Sure. This was so much fun. You're a small business owner, but that means you're a lot of other things too. Accountant, handyman, payroll specialist, and IT expert just to name a few. So how about you like Capitas make at least one thing easy for you?

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