Get Involved, Internet: Help a machine write an album of pop music

By Sam Barsanti  |  September 10, 2018 | 9:15pm
Aux Features Music

We don’t normally side with the machines here at The A.V. Club, because we’ve always maintained that the human race is doing a damn good job destroying itself without needing any help, but we also believe that the world of pop culture has plenty of room for new voices—even the digitized hum of cold, soulless robot. So, it is with only a small amount of trepidation that we’d like to direct your attention to this Kickstarter page for The Songularity, a pop album co-created by both humans and machines.


The project was created by Botnik Studios, the group co-created by former Clickhole writer Jamie Brew that you may remember from all of the times it has done weird stuff with predictive text generators. Basically, they feed some text into a computer and then have the computer create some other thing using that text, like a phony Coahcella poster or a Harry Potter book. The Songularity is the same basic concept, but Botnik is going to use the computer to create song lyrics.

The Kickstarter is looking to raise $15,000 by early October for a digital album and a digital zine, but Botnik has laid out a few stretch goals in case this thing really takes off, including a physical release of the album, the possibility of going wildly corrupt, and a takeover of the entire global economy. You’ll probably get some sick backer rewards if you help them pull off that one!

 
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