The final videos without lyrics to The Dusty Mirror were uploaded yesterday.
I took a look at some AI video tools and I suddenly felt that doing anything at all with AI would be toxic, as toxic as an association with Jeffrey Epstein or Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter, or anything else in the sphere of the 'cancelled'. AI has elements of a drug. Song generation AI has huge appeal to those who have no musical ability, and video generation AI has appeal to those with no video capability, but perhaps one day those who use it will gain ability, and on that day they'll declare 'But guys! I can do it myself now!' but it will be too late. The 'fans' who prefer AI wouldn't want the 'real creations' and those who disliked them would not touch someone tainted by AI. The toxicity will always be there, it's like a drug in this respect, a stigma, not with respect to addiction.
I became an artist partly as a rebellion against my computer background, to avoid the digital and its falseness, fake-ness and rigidity. I've not, to date, used AI (in music, video, chat or anything else, though yes, I'd happily take credit for my 2014 album by Oldfield 1 Art By Machine as being an 'AI creation', composed using random means and a program of my own design; but this is not what most people consider AI today, that is ChatGPT-style generative AI). As AI becomes popular I'm increasingly interested in that which is not-AI, the hand made, the ersatz, and human. This is a sort of digital 'arts and crafts' movement, the arts movement from the late 19th century which emerged as a reaction to the industrial revolution. A key part of my philosophy as an artist is to do what others don't, or won't, or can't.
Art is about expressing yourself, our human selves. AI can help, but tools of any sort can get in the way of this expression. 2025 AI is more than a tool, it's more like a collaborator, and there's a difference between what we as artists want and what a (more able) collaborator suggests and we later accept. In 20th century music such things happened often, when a young star was guided (or misguided) by record companies, producers, peers, to create their sort of sound. Those artists ended up lost, rejected, dumped. I remember the Milli Vanilli controversy, where the artist didn't sing on their track, or the similar reaction to The Monkees, when accused of not playing their instruments. The taint of AI to artist will, I suspect, be the same.
This commentary already feels old. AI will rapidly change, and perhaps become a brilliant and able collaborator, but like collaborating with any genius artist, the art he/she/it makes will be his/hers/its own. If Mozart were a slave to the exact requirements ('prompts') of his patron, would Mozart or the patron be the artist? Artists have faced this exact problem for centuries, and the artists who have proven to be the best are those who damn their patrons and do as they will.
Today is the day of the winter solstice, and we've determined to visit some ancient standing stones, The Bridestones. These stones as a monument, once tomb, are over 4000 years old, though achingly sadly wrecked in the 19th century. They sit on Cloud Hill, Congleton, and I wrote this poem for the occasion which I'll read there today.
On Cloud Hill
On Cloud Hill to the sky I reach
With eyes of glassy youth and bright
I sigh for that which bones can't teach
For broken here these bones alight
We here at winter's lowest stroke
Make prayers with fleeting voice and tone
These gods are dead, yet speak their joke
From corpses of eternal stone
The season's arc is sliced in amber
Afire for souls of shiv'ring awe
The copper on this skin of sand
Will reach this mark ten thousand more
These things will look up, cold and still
Long after we turn cloud to hill
