Sweet Spot is an attempt at implementing spatial strategies as a core element in the songwriting. We asked ourselves if the higher-resolution sound field can contain more information and experimented with the multiplicity of melodic narratives, questioning the hierarchies of a supposed main and supporting vocal, foreground/background positions. Furthermore, we experimented with using AI to co-write lyrics, exploring how this process differs from how we traditionally write lyrics; a process that can draw on everything from intuition or the subconscious, current events, scraps of overheard conversation, or lines that we come across in literature for instance. We found that what is artistically productive when engaging with AI has little to do with the autonomy of AI and a lot to do with the artist’s intentionality: the abilities to select, combine, and engage in dialogue. And these are early experiments that we’ve conducted.
Thematically Sweet Spot is inspired by the expansion of the universe and orbiting celestial bodies. What emerges when we let go of a fixed center? Whether in love, sound, or our understanding of the universe. What new possibilities emerge when we embrace the unknown, the decentralized, and the ever-moving?
We composed two primary melodies for the two voices to explore interplay through spatialization, using our Space Halo interfaces. This allowed us to dynamically shape and question the hierarchy and spatial relationship between them. In the chorus, the two melodies converge into a deliberately monotonous center, unmoving, repetitive, and in unison, while the harmony remains static, with chords that do not progress but instead hover, unresolved. This sonic stasis mirrors the lyric “You and I, you and I we’re in the center of it all.”
We built the sky with steady hand,
threw stars onto a map,
we marked a center where we stand,
but slowly sensed a gap
Cause space itself is showing,
not a path, but time that folds
a thought is now a knowing—
as space expands and grows
You and I
you and I we’re in the center of it all
as if our love, as if our love was like a blue marble ball
You and I, you and I we’re in the center of fun
as if our love, as if our love was enlightened by the sun
We built the sky with steady hand
threw stars onto a map,
we marked a center where we stand,
but slowly felt a gap
Cause space itself is showing,
not a path, but time that bends,
a thought is now a knowing,
as cosmos never ends
While writing this song, we came up with a way of mapping spatial cues for our interfaces that later became the notation system for our songs (more about notation here). This notation system was helpful in choreographing the roles between voices.
Initial prompt for ChatGPT: “Write a song lyric with the theme: Growth of Space—a song that reflects on how we no longer see the universe as Earth centered (geocentrism) or Sun centered (heliocentrism) that uses spatial sound, to portray the universe as a vast, expanding, multi-dimensional structure. Distant galaxies are moving away from us, not because they’re traveling through space but because space itself is growing. Similarly, as we explore new sonic worlds and perspectives of spatial sound, what is the new that we cannot see yet, that awaits beyond the stereo-centric?” This was followed by a long back-and-forth conversation with ChatGPT while developing the lyrics. We found that what is artistically productive here has little to do with the autonomy of AI and more to do with the artist’s intentionality—the abilities to select, combine, and engage in dialogue.
Copernican heliocentrism is the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. This model positioned the Sun at the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets orbiting around it in circular paths, modified by epicycles, and at uniform speeds. The Copernican model displaced the geocentric model of Ptolemy, which placed the Earth at the center of the Universe and had prevailed for centuries.
An Icelandic manuscript from roughly 1750 depicting the geocentric model of the solar system
In classical physics, time proceeds constantly and independently for all objects. In relativity, spacetime is a four-dimensional continuum that combines the familiar three dimensions of space with the dimension of time.
When stars die, they throw off their outer layers, creating clouds that birth new stars.