What is ‘Something Authentic’?
Something Authentic was a story that I could not place. The people who populate the story have become friends and loved ones. Well, most of them. Stories need villains, too.
These characters needed to see daylight. If Something Authentic were to live outside of my head and hard drive, it needed to become something else.
Meet data_wolf
With the help of a brilliant collaborator, Andrew Wilkinson, aka data_wolf, Something Authentic did become something else: a short story told by text-to-speech and set to random generative music.
Something Authentic is Season 1 of the Kid8 Podcast, debuting June 1, 2022 wherever you listen to podcasts. Each episode will be a portion of the story. The final episode will be a play-through of the entire tale.
Now, what is random generative music? As data_wolf describes it:
“Generative music is software that looks like how a synthesizer would look if you lifted the lid off it. You can choose the different sounds that you might want to use, then you can change the key, the pacing, and where they come in. There are also other subcategories of changing rate with oscillators. Then there are other categories of adding effects, like delay, distortion, reverb.
“Then you can design which sound plays in which key and when. It’s an experiment at this early stage. It’s hard to know exactly what the outcome is going to be when sounds come in at different times. But if you’re in the right key, it seems to build and overlap in terms of timing.”
It’s an intricate dance between chaos and control. The composer can corral the sound, but ultimately, it waltzes off wherever it wants within the confines.
The robot speaks
The text integration is done with Wotja, data_wolf explains. The user enters text and selects a voice, then the voice reads the text as best as a computer can.
“It seemed like this was an ideal fit to have the computer and the robot do most of the creative work after the creative work was done, in terms of the creative writing, and to see how it would feel as a short story being read in this way – if it could feel like a new thing using this very challenging software.”
data_wolf’s creative direction dovetailed with an experiment to ascertain the potential of creative writing in the NFT/Web3 world. Each episode of Something Authentic will be available for purchase as an NFT the day the episode drops.
The idea of provenance is central to the utility of NFTs. The blockchain immutably proves origins and ownership with total transparency. Something Authentic is in part a story about objects, their histories, and the meaning we attach to both. Provenance is an inseparable part of that conversation.
Collaborations with other artists for future seasons are in the works.
That’s all for now. Please enjoy Something Authentic on June 1, 2022, wherever you listen to podcasts – and support your local creatives. You can sign up for email updates on Something Authentic here.
Additional information
The creators
Joe Hannan
Andrew Wilkinson
The background
The software