Electrofunk Revisited: Women’s History Month Edition
Electro (or electrofunk) is a genre of electronic music and early hip hop directly influenced by the use of the Roland TR-808 drum machine and funk music. As the genre evolved, computers and sampling replaced drum machines. According to wikipedia:
[E]lectro instrumentation favored analog synthesis, programmed bass lines, sequenced or arpeggiated synthetic riffs, and atonal sound effects all created with synthesizers. Heavy use of effects such as reverbs, delays, chorus or phasers along with eerie synthetic ensemble strings or pad sounds emphasized the science fiction or futuristic themes of classic (1980s) electro, represented in the lyrics and/or music.
Examples of Electro include Soul Sonic Force’s “Planet Rock”, Drexciya’s “The Quest,” Cybotron’s “Clear,” Jonzun Crew’s “Pac Jam,” and Warp 9’s “Light Years Away” that, according to David Toop (2020), “exemplifies the science-fiction, afrofuturist aspect of electro, reflected in both the lyrics and instrumentation.” The imagery of the latter song’s lyrical refrain space is the place for the human race pays homage to Sun Ra’s 1974 film of the same name, while its synth lines and sound effects are informed by sci-fi, computer games, and cartoons.
A decade before electro Black women were channelling similar themes in their hairstyles and clothing, as seen in films such as Mahogany (1975) and in music such as Betty Davis’ They Say I’m Different (1974). Davis was described as a “a wildly flamboyant funk diva with few equals … [who] combined the gritty emotional realism of Tina Turner, the futurist fashion sense of David Bowie, and the trendsetting flair of Miles Davis.” She was a pioneer. You could say my work is/was inspired by this 1970s and early 1980’s zeitgeist. My 2010s computer-generated and outdoor projection mapped works were inspired by electro/electrofunk as is my current generative AI artworks.
With the latter GenAI series I was interested in juxtaposing electro-funky futuristic fashion and naturalistic landscapes, so I used prompts that produced the style or aesthetic I loved and grew up with. A quick adjustment of the prompt completely changed the artistic style of the output, as seen in these thumbnails:
Generative AI and GenAI art is a continuation of the electro-funky creativity and innovation from the 1970s and 80s, moving from fashion and drum machines to computers and sampling, and now artificial intelligence. Within a prompt, images can be created that mix or remix past content (people, fashion, art styles, etc.). The visual ideas or concepts almost come as fast and frequent as the ideas are formed in the brain.
For me, the number of iterations, or variations on prompts are the main reason I keep returning to and experimenting with generative AI tools. In the latter image (above) I went from Midjourney to my OG tool Deep Dream Generator and, finally, Photoshop to create an image that best represents the ideas I’m exploring. Daily practice using these tools increases the speed in which I am able to generate, composite and complete images. This process is similar to how I created digital collages in the 1990s but now with latent space. Jake Elwes writes,
In artificial intelligence ‘Latent Space’ refers to a mathematical space which maps what a neural network has learnt from training images. Once it has been trained it understands all images of trees as existing in a specific area, and all images of birds in another.
Elwes notes that this technology can be (and is) reverse engineered to create fake images but he suggests a new path in the in-between space using an “AI algorithm in its infancy trained using 14.2 million photographs.” The output will be nothing like the world has ever seen before.