Music performed by: 12 Ensemble
Visuals by: Ben Ditto
In a programme of music for strings that spans from a 1946 work by Richard Strauss to a 2022 piece by Oliver Leith, 12 Ensemble’s Metamorphosis is an attempt to bring something extra to the classical music experience. Although the pieces in their original contexts bring with them strong programmatic backstories, this production creates its own AI-generated visual narrative, which is projected holographically onto a gauze in front of the ensemble. It’s hard to fathom the intention behind these visuals, but the soullessness of the end result was probably not it.
There’s something very human about an orchestra. A group of people scraping bows on strings and somehow making achingly beautiful music has a magic to it that testifies to the passion and hard work of those involved. There are no shortcuts, there’s no trickery. When something is AI-generated the human element is being squeezed out. No doubt the team behind tonight’s visuals, led by visual artist Ben Ditto, have put a great deal of all-too-human blood, sweat and tears into the process, but what they’ve created feels like a failed alien approximation of what counts as beautiful on Planet Earth.
The most successful part of the visuals comes at the beginning of proceedings with the swelling long notes of Edmund Finnis’ Hymn (after Byrd). Abstract wisps like smoke blossom out as the volume of the strings increases then fades away in the pauses. It’s when the images start to become figurative that the problems start. At first, when a face appears in the swirling colour it feels surprising and magical, like a Fantasia-style evolution parable; but the bodies that emerge thereafter are either Chad-pilled six-packed demi-gods or round-breasted sci-fi feminoids. It makes you wonder whether the AI syphoned its machine learning from the mind of a teenage boy.
Taking a step back from the dystopian aspects of the AI, there is a spell-binding fluidity to the constant movement of the animation. It relentlessly fits the brief of “metamorphosis” and the way one thing turns into another is compelling perhaps because it’s computer-generated. When the twisting images just touch upon without fully realising elements of the natural world, like birds, plants, coral reefs, tentacles, the texture and pearlescence of shells, it’s beautiful in its desire to be part of that world. And there’s a poignancy to the way it sits separate, with its back to the music.
The music itself is exquisitely played and the pieces form a pleasing programme. The tender cadences of opener Hymn (after Byrd) are followed by the increasingly anguished Zipangu by Claude Vivier, an ode to Japanese kabuki theatre. The Vivier piece is full of lurching dissonances and scratchy harmonics with resolution trying to break through only to be thwarted by frantic, sliding violin lines. An instrumental aria from Oliver Leith’s 2022 opera about the death of Kurt Cobain has a similarly melancholy elegiac feel – no references to any Nirvana songs though, unfortunately. Then, the evening’s finale is Richard Strauss’ World War II lament Metamorphosen for 25 Strings which is unsettling and slightly maddening in its meandering, constantly modulating fragments of melody. It’s often slightly hard to focus on the music though because of the baffling conundrum the visuals are presenting.
It’s difficult to be circumspect about the value of AI-generated art when there’s such a fear of loss attached to its rampant growth. Now we know how easy it is to use a computer program to do most of the work for you in certain areas – ChatGPT writing essays or DALL-E producing unhinged digital images from text prompts, for example – we’re on edge, because we don’t want to be duped or replaced. From the look of the metamorphosing images in front of us tonight, the worry is that the guys behind the scenes are just typing in phrases like “sexy plant girl with a crown of thorns” and “biblically-accurate Pokémon”, then letting the AI fill in the gaps. Whatever the intention was, that’s the effect it’s giving.
Reviewed on 16 May 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Exquisite strings, distracting AI
