Midsummer Nights Dream (MND)
Saturday afternoons from 11:30 – 16:30 we rehearse starting January 18th until April 19th & 20th when we have two matinee try-outs at OT 301 (Overtoom 301) at 2 pm and April 22nd & 23rd (Shakespeare’s Birthday) we have two showings at Mike’s Badhuis. Fairies, Mechanicals, and Lovers are doing fine and looking forward.
[Link to Music album by Fly]
Tag: Amsterdam
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Shakespeare ensemble
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Using AI for Countercultural Art and Global Transformation with Steve Fly
Steve Fly: The latest iteration of my quarter-century (and counting) of research into Robert Anton Wilson’s Tale of the Tribe is a collaboration using some AI tools. Tale of The Tribe is a mountain range whose size and scope requires training to traverse, hill-climbing toward coherence. So far I’ve produced over 65 stanzas with corresponding audio. The first iteration is structured on 60 stanzas to represent the 60 vertices of the Buckminsterfullerene. This is prompted from a line in Ezra Pound’s Cantos “buckie has gone in for structure.” The structure of the poem/album is a tribute to Buckminster Fuller, whom RAW admired and studied with, and it snugly sits as one of the 13 primary inspirations in the way RAW conceived/perceived the universe.
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MMXXV new year message
Happy New Yeah I’ll Write Then…
Dedicated to those who didn’t make it through the brutal 2024, and those who may feel forgotten, left behind or overlooked. The world is a better place with you in it, innit, just don’t get any big ideas, like saving the planet, okay. Phew, it’s a lot, innit, and only increasing as each year rolls by, the older you get the more you have to process, and balance the exponential reality check-book. Selective memory and the swiftly forgotten as a survival measure. You are that which remains, I am that which remains, so here we remain the remains of the day.
Here some past present future tensions stretched and shrunk to fit the purpose. Stuff I think about, in review, inner and outer, subjective and attempted objective, half full and half empty looking glass. Hopes and fears, everybody does it. Short term nostalgia trip and honest scribble for any readers who got this far.
What was real in 2024? I ask of myself and the outsiders. What is true or true enough to get some group of believers or other, on board with the bare cult minimum of effort. New loops lie ahead on history’s rollercoaster, only just finished and designed by a drunken lunatic, and we’re zooming upside down and around, some well strapped in, some with hands in the air, some standing as we go over the top and around the bend.
The challenge to keep one’s head, while seemingly others lose theirs to some ideology or other, some big dada or saviour, some scam, yet it’s all many have. A rude and crass “i told you so” or “you’re very wrong” does not help, the result is the same. Creeping insanity, don’t call it genocide, the feeling that you’re the only one who thinks this or that way, locked off, isolated in a world of self doubt and a lack of confidence, well shit, pick up that pen, that brush, that instrument, that rhyme, get it down and out. Now.
Write, draw, play, speak, now’s the time. It’s for your own good, don’t expect fame or fortunes, go for sanity and therapy. Order, chaos, complexity, disorder, in various ratios, plus harmony, sense, knowledge, understanding, try to figure it out for yourself first. Test it. Take it easy, the world is not all your problem. Start small, be thankful for what you’ve got, try to make it make sense. Be the altruism and benevolence you wish to see in the world. Yes, these are positive reinforcement messages from my toilet wall.
And try to remember, after covid, 80% of incumbent candidates, those currently in office, lost in 2024 elections, worldwide. Change, in a political sense, swept across the chess board like a powerful haunting super fart, turning over unprepared governments like bowling pins, upsetting apple carts and causing distress to many rational thinking people. Populism, powered by collective post-covid, post-truth psychosis, rears its ugly head, in the spirit of vulture capitalism, or disaster capitalism, these ravenous birds of prey snatch away the hungry, disenfranchised, vulnerable and angry into their clutches. Bejewelled birds of prey, covered in priceless diamond rings, rubies and emeralds, the richest birds paid up by the richest apex predator: Musk. 2024 is his year, the year of the Musk man, emotionally derelict, money talks and bullshit walks all over what tatters of the constitution remain after the feeding frenzy by sharks and hyenas, lawyers and crooked supreme justices over decades. And the climate and the climate. Wars and war, arms and arms. Don”t call it genocide, follow the rules of war, arms sales but fly no flags. Arms race, race race. Too many still profit from disaster, from disaster too many turn away. Union strong, truth and honesty strong, small is beautiful, stronger together in 2025. Deeee escalate. What of the tribe and the tale of 2024, the tech fash bros and lurch toward theocracy, a second coming closer, a fake saviour, devil in tanned disguise, as Elvis said.
Yet, here we are. So, what’s next you lot? What text, image, sound, video, real, fake, co-created or hallucinated? What what what. Our new duty, or one of em’, is to cohere, to pull it all together into digestible chunks of a bloody big healthy cake, a slice of bitter sweet 2024, on the flipper side there’s Crypto Fash Hyper Crime Family Strokes, or some such new U.S sitcom. United States drama mind creep, season two of the worst unreality TV show ever. Trump, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist in chief. What now my cuddlies, what now? Well, let the suicide squad enter a hate induced coma.
Continue as you were, poet, artist, philosopher, wit, romantic. Forget about the chicken hawk show, conceive of a kind of Buddhist reality construct, where all human beings are like equally coming Buddhas, full compassion for all sentient beings, including them, they, the Trumpers and worse. It’s inside us all somewhere, maybe misplaced or misidentified, the love is there. One way forward, truly, but not so popular in a rage and rant world, is forgiveness, albeit, coated in L.S.D. Love harder and deeper, more broadly. Keep a grip of yourself. Hold onto others tight. Thou shall not kill or swindle others out of their neurons. More self help slogans for your uncle’s garage wall.
2025 will be a year of pulling away from social media and unpublishing some work, closing accounts and encouraging others to do the same. The time and energy saved will, with luck, funnel into alternate avenues to reach people based on analogue media. Art, craft, performance, workshops, hanging out.
The AI is not to be feared or rejected, we must organize and use every means at our disposal to build that better world of abundance for all, attained without lies, violence and threats. Continue the work and don’t expect any recognition or thanks because such expectations may cause you to want to quit. Never give up. Work on kindness and sharing, tolerance and spreading love, there’s enough people already working on the opposites to these virtues.
Sincerely wishing you all a piece of peace pie, success, health, healing, learning, giggles and clarity in 2025.
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arty fishy
Arty Fish Innovation
a new renaissance
turing complete beat
a core ontology
with hyper seeds
who the judge and what topic
rivers 111 geometrik symbols
a river with two banks
info flow state
we the fish people
currents and eddies
gyres and entanglements
nets and bait
hooks and bass line
arty fish innovation land mind
pices battered
caught and fried with sauces
fishkapiscuss
and discuss
cod loves you with pauses
this core ontology so fishy
swimming photons
quarks and seagulls
the eel gell man
arty fishy knowledge bass
mingus flea coltrane circle
ontology knowledge bass line
soul struggles as salmon
jump upstreams
download stream dream of breem
perceptually coupled to
aqua environment
arty fish in water
hydro dynamics
wiggle and wave to shannons cave
self organizing
godfish brains core ontology
octopus general arty squirt
ink symbolic departure
whale school break boats
speak aloud babble
arty fish kitch
swimmulation im moorsive
sieve steve
swum and bass line hook
arty fish ontology evolved
like sharks
dynamic efficient dudley
computational hunting
anglo rhythms
claude sonnets shannon waves
chat with a lama
dzogchen arty fish
dream fish tulku
ghost in the washing machine
texture arty fisht scale weights
measures flow fluid logic lakes
vortex turtle in the maelstrom
emerald shells glint of jewel
ascii refraction surface to air mint
arty fish innovation rights
where to trawl data fish and chips
aye gee I
ontology core knowledge bass
versatility of domains land sky water
moon chess
specialized insects
models of use
find a proof of the riemann hypothesis
do correct algebra derivations
explain to a third grade primary
school of merlin
shannon waves in joyce’s voices
brewed under arclight by the pound
ladddled from welles
from muck loos and freako
fly generally not speaking
writing coordination
wise arty fish wise
dancing to market on ice
smart lobster bosses click
muted screams of food chain
on topic, my theme biopic
jump the fence, skip games and math
walk the path, drafty draft
map the maps
–Steve Fly (off the top of the dumb)
Amsterdam, 24th December 2024.
Lyrics and prompts fed into Udio to create an audio setting for the words. Themselves around and about a core ontology knowledge base for a.i. a.k.a Arty Fishy Intelligence (off the dumb). -
dj flai mix of original deep scratch music
After nearly two decades under development, Deep Scratch is here/over there. The interplay of audio and text and image as I first envisioned it in the early 2000s. The audio side of this equation has been lacking due to various reasons, including limited access to instruments, equipment and recording facilities. New generative a.i., tools (Udio) have allowed me to produce music to precisely fit the narrative I have constructed in the novel Deep Scratch. A collaborative, self-replicating magical code that generates audio from text. This year, Udio made science fiction into fact.
After constructing over 160 separate pieces of music, I mixed the Deep Scratch tunes together into 4 separate mixes, or audio chapters. Over 3 hours of original music that only exists here, a kind of science “sonic” fiction. Cuts selected from the Deep Scratch Universe, that reflect the sounds, styles and arrangements of classic DJ mixtapes and beat tapes from the mid to late 1990’s, and early naughties.
(A third book in the Deep Scratch Universe will be released sometime during late summer 2024, further contextualizing and organizing the multimedia multiverses.)
Thanks to everybody at my patreon page, who has stuck with me over the last 6-7 years as I’ve been going on and on about this Deep Scratch Universe, without truly launching any Deep Scratch Audio. Now, the soundtrack to the novel is established via a new series of DJ mixes (all add free).flai mix chapter one
FLAI MIX CHAPTER TWO
FLAI MIX CHAPTER THREE
FLAI MIX CHAPTER FOURThe fourth chapter features raps, of which I’m conscious sound nothing like my own voice, and/or rap cadence or delivery. These are my own words, taken from my book of collected poems (to be published) spanning 2004 – 2024. As a fan of hip hop, rap and hip hop DJ styles and productions, mixtapes and live eclectic DJ sets, I’d like to give a shout out to all the artists, MCs and producers, that some of these tracks sound like (to my ear). That’s besides the thousands of artists and musicians who came before, those who innovated, originated and recorded the music: blues, jazz, soul, funk, gospel, rock and roll, folk, bluegrass, film music, classical music, vocal harmony music, world music, from the 20s through to the 2020s. All the music within the data sets or set (?) that the generative AI has been trained on.
Support your local independent musicians and music venues whenever possible. Respect your artistic ancestors and their struggles and sacrifices made to bring original art into the world. Try to keep in mind that generative A.I. does not sample the music in the conventional sense of that concept, although the process is a kind of sampling, these sounds are made from granulated probability functions, if I understand the process correctly. I hope the turntablist, scratch and juggle and cut-up approach of the eclectic DJ adds a new context to the use of generative AI, a part of the evolution of the art of the DJ and their place in between producer artist and audience. Perhaps better defined as curator, or boss of their own label or catalog of recordings, to be mixed and remixed, blended or released as an album or single. Also consider that all my music using collaborative AI did not use any artist names. Any likeness to artists living or dead is purely probabilistic coincidance.
In no particular order, thanks to: Sample Hooligans: Coldcut and the original 90s Ninja Tune artists, DJs and turntable journeymen. To Mo-Wax records, and the Psychonauts, and their DJ sets and productions. To the Bristol massive, purple penguin records, Massive Attack Soundsystem, Portishead, DJ Andy Smith (the only turntable artist included in a successful UK band), Melankolic records, Cup Of Tea records, and all that dub infused instrumental jazz tinged hip hop, Grand Central records in Manchester, Dorado records and artists, Warp records and artists, Aphex Twin, Square Pusher, Big Dada records, Acid Jazz records, Jazzman records, BBE records, 4th And Broadway Records, Two Lone Swordsmen, Sabres Of Paradise, Black Dog, Future Sounds Of London, DJ Krush music, DJ Shadow music, Invisible Scratch Pickle mix tapes, The Beat Junkies, Lauryn Hill, The X-ecutioners, Ohm records, Amoeba Record shop, Soulsides Crew, The Pharcyde, 3rd Eye Foundation, Hieroglyphics Crew, Del The Funky Homosapien, MF Doom, Wu Tang, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Bill Laswell Productions, Spectre, Lord Finesse, Rakim, Pharoah Monch, LEX records, Kool Keith, Public Enemy, Mr. Liff, Future Primitive Sound, DJ Z-Trip, The Nomadic Massive, We Funk, Funkmaster Flex MixTapes, The Roots Crew, Black Thought, El-P, Company Flow, Saul Williams, New Flesh, Juice Aleem, Rodney P, Scratch Pervert DJs, Jazz Fudge Records, DJ Vadim, Part 2, Invisible Spies, Channel One, Lee Scratch Perry, Ultimate Dilemma, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Roots Manuva, Courtney Pine, Talkin’ Jazz, Charlie Dark, UNKLE, Steve Task and Bear, Stump Juice Wolverhampton, The Steering Wheel Birmingham, Fabric, Cargo, Luke Vibert, DJ Food, DJ Spooky, J Swinscoe, Rockers Hi-Fi, Different Drummer records, Tempest Records, The Plastic Factory records, Swordfish Records, Eddie Otchere, Source Distribution, J Saul Kane, DJ Moneyshot, DJ Yoda, The Jazz Stage Glastonbury, DJ Cheb I Sabbah, Funki Porcini. And those I missed out.
For nearly 3 decades I’ve supported all of the above artists by way of buying their records, tickets to shows and speaking highly of them, turning on other DJs and audiences to their music. This does not necessarily give me any more of a license to use generative a.i., with a clear conscience, but…I’ve paid dues and can trace my evolution toward this moment via my 2 decade Deep Scratch experiment.The next step in the on-going process is to plan for some traditional analogue music recording sessions with musicians and vocalists and videographers, to take back control from the generative AI, bringing it back to the human community of creative beings. Easier said than done, and requiring resources and planning and work. This process hammers home the point that AI can be used to bring human beings together, not divide.
—Steve Fly
Amsterdam.https://deepscratch.net
https://www.patreon.com/stevefly
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FLY IN THE JAMM PRO (PLAYLIST)
Stay tuned, more remixes will be added to this playlist. Special thanks to Matt B and all Jammer Yammers. Visit
https://jammpro.net/ to get yer’ mittens on the APP.
–Fly
