*50 copies limited edition* In recent years, much has been written about artificial intelligence and how it can be used. In the art world, these apprehensions have quickly turned into workers' struggles which, beyond criticisms of AI as a tool, have brought to the forefront the flawed relations of production between art commissioners, work instruments and artists. This syndrome of the gargantuan appetite of the capitalist hydra within the cultural and creative industries has, however, left in its blind spot the sensitive experiences of a joint adventure with AI.
Cahn Ingold Prelog's work in The Well-Tempered Diffusion Model can be likened to that of an interpreter, an attentive translator forging a poetic dialogue with the machine. The titles of the Bach pieces used as prompts reveal a more abstract nature than the practical exercises for young musicians devised by the German composer. Here, rhythm and harmony follow tortuous patterns, gravitating around the rule rather than applying it to the letter.
The palette of virtual instruments chosen by Cahn Ingold Prelog offers the listener multiple, ambiguous universes. In N°11, a half-gamelan, half-tubular bell creature wanders over the spectrum of a string orchestra lost in the middle of some kind of Tristan Murail's process. The vocal ensemble of N°9 seems in constant contortion to accompany the singularity of the percussion. Percussion forms a capricious thread running through the entire album. They appear impromptu, disassociated and elusive, finally freed from the yoke of metre.
Cahn Ingold Prelog is an artist based in Wales. Under various aliases, he invites himself onto the parallel timelines of a fragmented musical history. Metamorphosing constraints into creative setbacks, he cultivates a spontaneous musical language that questions the place of narrative in the act of creation. The Well-Tempered Diffusion Model is just one page in a dense collection of work the artist has begun with AI, which has led him to recreate 34 of the UK's best-selling singles or reinterpret releases from the Waxing Crescent Records label.
