Cameron’s Dream Part 1

Cameron’s Dream Part 2

Cameron’s Dream Part 3

Using a similar approach to writing the reviews, tweets were constructed referencing the band, their songs, the venue and similar artists – the tweets were then delivered live as the bands were actually performing.

In addition, the account ‘spotted’ people in the crowd – this was rather haphazard as it relied on some rather basic username scraping (followers of the Great Escape, who had ‘Brighton’ in their bio location). However it did indeed get it right a few times, as seen in some of the sample interactions below. (The account got it totally wrong about Trippple Nippples, though, they were excellent)

In many ways, questions about the trustworthiness of a critic’s opinion mirror questions about authenticity – we want the critics to be as ‘true to themselves’ as the artists they critique, and nowhere is this more important than when appraising a novel piece of art for which we have no references of our own.

Much of my work deals with notions of authenticity, both real and manufactured, and this piece investigates whether, under certain conditions, it is possible to create plausibly authentic opinions in an automatic, generative manner, and to see whether these can be successfully passed off, or even appropriated by people in need of critical guidance.

As with many of the greatest of ideas, this one started in the pub – I was perusing a flyer for a forthcoming band, and noticed the particular prose used to describe musical acts. It’s a concise mix of expressive verbiage and references to genres or to other more established bands. It struck me that this would be an interesting domain of language to use in a generative system – would it be possible to auto-generate opinions about bands?

Normally these kinds of ideas get drowned out by the next pint, however this one stuck. I began experimenting with cut-up techniques on existing music reviews harvested from the net and found that indeed, there is a distinct consistency in the language used, and in many cases the reviews have juicy meta-data associated with them, giving me some sense of whether the review is positive or negative.

The system evolved from there, harvesting more information from the Last.fm API to maintain internal consistency with the bands and songs mentioned in the reviews. I now had a machine which would write plausible looking reviews for any band that had a few scrobbles on last.fm.

I was keen to take this system into the physical world, as printed artefacts rather than some pointless online experiment, and the perfect opportunity presents itself in the form of The Great Escape Festival, a showcase of 300+ bands that very few people have heard of. What better place to introduce some manufactured opinion?

The work takes the form of a free fanzine, and great care was taken to present it in a lo-fi manner, making mistakes in the text more forgivable. Each copy of the magazine contains 16 auto-generated previews for bands playing the festival. In addition, each individual copy of the magazine is different, with unique opinions about the bands which have been chosen.

Further discussion of the project can be heard in the following radio interview:

In addition, I have created a twitter account @cutupmusic which will be live-reviewing every single performance, simultaneously…

Below are some sample reviews:

All paintings Acrylic on canvas, 762mm x 508mm (30″ x 20″)

Acrylic on canvas, 762 x 508mm

Clarkson is best known for his TV programme, ‘Top Gear’, but also for his contentious remarks.

I took some photographs while painting, here’s a brief time-lapse of how he emerged from the canvas.

These paintings are currently on display at The Skiff in Brighton. If you are interested in buying a painting, please email me

e coli

£250 SOLD

toxoplasma

£250

MRSA

£250

salmonella

£250 SOLD

malvaceae pollen

£250

Entamoeba Histolytica

£250

Giardia Lamblia

£250

HIV

£250

The WIttgenstein Brothers

£300

Francis Crick, Tripping

£300

Tycho Brahe

£300

Magnus Pyke

£250

Heinz Wolff

£250

Patrick Moore

£250

Tesla, the Prophet

£350 (framed)

Edison and Topsy

£350 (framed)

Peter Higgs

£500

Grace Hopper

£500

Linnaeus, Mendel and the Platypus

£450

The Duel over the Calculus

£400 (pair)

Greed

£666

It seemed only fitting that I should paint something on the theme of love.