New interview with Steve "Fly" Pratt

Steve's album for the Tales of Illuminatus project, available on Bandcamp. Also, see my interview. 

R.U. Sirius interviews Steve "Fly" Pratt about his use of AI in making music. Here's the first question and answer of the Mindplex magazine interview:

RU Sirius: How do you view your creative project (in the broadest lifelong sense) as a process that benefits from integrating current AI systems?

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.

These first 60 stanzas are a proof of concept, to be built on in the next iteration. The goal is for each stanza to also function as a concept for a new core ontology, the totality of the 60 stanzas. As Ben put it: “an overlapping yet somewhat diverse set of perspectives on the core ontological concept”.

More here. 

I enjoyed the R.U. Sirius episode on Hilaritas Podcasts

R.U. Sirius (portrait at Hilaritas Podcasts episode page).

I have not listened to every one of the Hilaritas podcasts, but I've listened to almost all of them, and the recent one with R.U. Sirius/Ken Goffman was a highlight for me.

I particularly liked the anecdotes about Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson and the discussion of Timothy Leary's books. 

Ken is hoping some of you will check out his Bandcamp page and listen to his music (as is usual with Bandcamp, you can play  the songs before you decide to buy them). 

As usual, the official podcast page has links to some of the topics Ken and Mike Gathers discuss.

Listen here, or just use any podcasting app. 

The podcast ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Ken talks about his memoir, Freaks In The Machine, which was about to be published when sudden changes at the publisher put the project in limbo. I asked for an update and was told today, "I'm afraid Freaks In The Machine is still in limbo. I also feel at this point it needs to be freshened up." It sounds interesting, but I guess we will have to wait.