The Aaron Horn Podcast With.... Sam Potter

In this episode, Aaron is joined by the Artist, Musician, and Author of Ecstatic Data Sets, Sam Potter. Aaron and Sam will be talking about Sam's book Ecstatic Data Sets: The Chorismos Apeiron Scanner (2028 Edition). The main focus of this episode is AI creativity, the relationship between technology and art, and Sam’s amazing Dream Machine where he deployed AI programs to interpret his dreams and explored how this can then be transposed into music.

Transcript

So welcome to the podcast,

It's a pleasure to have you.

Obviously I know you from our recent work together creating some visuals using AI and I was a big fan of your band,

Late of the Pier,

Who I probably did some DJ supports in East London back in the early 2000s.

So yeah,

Welcome,

It's great to have you.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah,

Pleasure.

So I mean obviously there's quite a lot of shared ground that we could talk about.

I think I'm really interested to hear more about your book,

I was reading that again today,

And yeah,

Some of your inspiration for the music that you created and the artwork that you are creating now.

So I don't know where you want to start or what you're interested in talking about first.

I don't know because it feels like every project is a little bit of a reaction against the last one in a way,

Because you mentioned the book I wrote there,

Which I did with a bit of a collaboration with Sam,

He's Dave from Late of the Pier as well,

He did all the drawings in there.

And yeah,

I mean that book is called Ecstatic Datasets and the general premise is,

If there's a difference between good music and great music,

Like the difference might be that great music actually listens to you and can shine a mirror on your soul and answer questions when maybe something else can't.

And I was thinking a lot about that theme because I'd just been writing music with the band Franz Ferdinand,

And I was with them for a good six months or something,

And then got like,

Sacked,

Yeah,

Pushed along.

I don't know the right term guys,

I got quite disillusioned with the music industry and I kind of found that quote,

I think it's Leonard Bernstein,

He says this thing about great music listening to you.

And then I wondered if I could use technology to do that,

And it was around the same time as Cambridge Analytica,

And I kind of wondered if their claims were true,

What would a good artist do with that kind of technology?

Like if you could have these psychographic,

Really beautiful maps of people's personalities and their hopes and dreams and what motivates them,

What would Andy Warhol make for you,

Or what would like John Cage make for you?

And that book,

Yeah,

That book I wrote is,

It's not supposed to be like an apologetic thing for Cambridge Analytica,

It's more like,

What good can we eek out of these terrifying non-human processes?

What human kind of centric uses could you have for them?

And how can we learn something about ourselves as individuals and collectives?

And if it's a non-human process that's teaching you,

Is there a problem with that?

Like,

Would you,

Maybe this is a question for you,

I know this is like your podcast,

But do you feel like it lessens the power of something if it's coming from a source that you don't necessarily like or agree with?

Yeah,

I mean,

That's a challenging one,

Isn't it?

When you fall out with bands you work with,

Does their music sound the same?

You know,

Music's quite a personal experience,

Isn't it?

So,

I think we always draw on our experiences with it,

If it's music we listened to when we were young,

You know?

And how it makes us feel,

It has an emotional content for sure,

And it kind of has an imprint on us,

The time we spend with that music.

But my reading of your book was,

I mean,

It's quite complex,

So my understanding,

Sort of one of the bits that I took out of it was,

Sort of,

How could you turn a sunset into a piece of music,

Right?

That was like,

Or the dusk,

The kind of beauty of the dusk,

How could you use AI combined with various factors to create music from natural processes?

Yeah,

I think we do that naturally.

I think quite often,

Have you ever heard this piece called Become Ocean by John Luther Adams?

It's this real,

Beautiful,

Sprawling,

Minimal masterpiece that's super dynamic,

Kind of,

And it's got a lot of music in it,

And it's super dynamic,

It sounds like an ocean.

So,

I think,

Like,

To use technology to try and do these things,

It's like a neat idea.

I talk a lot in the book about this idea called data sonification,

And essentially what you're doing there,

You're taking information or statistics and then you're transposing it into musical systems.

And the idea that there's an inherent mathematics underpinning nature and the things we see,

Even things like neurochemicals,

They have a signature we can transform into sound.

I think it's like a really neat idea,

But then,

Thinking of people like John Luther Adams,

He's used his imagination and his skills as a musician to far surpass anything that a Max MSP patch could do or a computer process.

So,

I think,

Yeah,

I think it's kind of like,

I was wondering if certain things,

You distill them down into sound,

Then you'd have this different way of approaching the data,

A more emotional,

Right-hand side of your brain way of navigating particular situations and bodies of information.

And I thought if you could get some way of doing that,

Then maybe you'd have a mathematician looking at an equation he's seen all his life and suddenly he's listening to it and suddenly,

Like,

He or she or they,

They've just figured this thing out.

They've heard something within the sound that they'd not noticed before,

Some outlier,

And suddenly it all clicks into place and they solve the problem.

So,

Like synesthesia,

This idea of being able to experience it in a different form,

Right?

Yeah,

For sure.

And I think,

Like,

I've always been into that idea.

I've had,

Like,

A tiny bit when I was younger.

I remember being about four years old and the teacher reading a story and just feeling like these real just like waves of just like,

Like feeling going through my neck and obviously something to do with her voice and the quietness of this primary school room.

It kind of induced this synesthesia.

And I used to do a night called Blackout where I used to book bands and artists and they'd play in the pitch black,

All anonymous and no one knew who they were,

And then try to induce synesthesia in people.

Like,

Have sensory scientists talk about how our senses overlap and stuff.

So,

The idea of applying synesthesia to education into presenting science,

Presenting,

Presenting,

Like,

Complex data is quite interesting.

Yeah,

Exactly,

Right,

Because it pulls it off the page and our brains are definitely,

It's easier to spot patterns,

Repetition or potential sort of outcomes in a piece of music than it may be,

Like you said,

When your scientist is looking at a data set again and again,

And it's just numbers.

Yeah,

And it's more fun as well.

For sure.

I mean,

Who knows,

Some of the stuff might sound,

I can imagine that it doesn't always sound,

Doesn't always line up and sound sort of good,

You know?

Well,

I mean,

That's kind of the thing with the process,

It's like,

It's kind of,

It's a little bit janky because you've got like,

You've got this human hand involved in the process.

So,

I could take CO2 levels in the atmosphere,

Like a data set of that in London,

Compare 2022 to 1935 or whenever the records were first started,

And then I can choose,

I can choose the sounds I make,

I can choose how I use those numbers within like a frequency range.

I mean,

I could make it sound really lovely and then you're kind of lying.

Yeah,

I think it reminds me of those videos that are quite popular where people are sort of plugging receptors onto plants and saying,

Hey,

This is what the plant sounds like.

And like you said,

There's always a sort of human hand in there because you're only dealing with a certain number of outcomes.

They're kind of cool though,

Because what it's picking up on is like electromagnetic information,

Isn't it?

So,

There is like,

There is like,

The signal is always true,

Like that first point is always true.

And then you as an artist,

You're choosing how you express that signal and it's getting further,

It's losing fidelity basically.

And then by the end,

You've probably got something different.

But it's a nice,

I don't know,

It's a nice little method.

And the premise of the book as well is that if you have these people experiencing this music making machine that's listening to the body and listening to the experience and the mood and the day of the individual who's plugged into it,

And if it's guiding them to these quite exotic states of mind and these deeper seats of awareness,

They could also be doing this feedback loop thing where it's taking that information and it's feeding it back on them through sound.

So,

The sound of your ecstasy is then turned into sound and then it's fed back on you.

And if you can do it with yourself,

It means you could also tune in to someone in India doing the same thing or someone in Madagascar or like Georgia or like,

It could be this really sweet kind of radio where you're just listening to different levels of euphoria around the world.

Yeah,

It could automatically connect you with people who are sort of harmonizing with your tone,

You know,

And they could say,

Hey,

There's someone in Helsinki who is the perfect fifth for you right now and why don't we connect you guys and then.

.

.

Or even better,

Someone who's going through the same euphoric experience but it's completely different.

Like,

That's the real joy.

And then you get people from conflicting places like Azerbaijan and Armenia or like Israel and Palestine,

You're kind of like,

You're getting people,

They're kind of making music with their ecstasy and then they're finding these commonalities and these points where they push against each other.

And I think it's something super poetic about that.

And ultimately,

You think there's some sort of element of healing or potential,

You know,

Benefit for health,

Wellness in an experience like that?

Yeah,

Definitely.

So I mean,

It depends how it's expressed as well.

I mean,

Like,

I could do this and I might get something wrong and people are just scared.

And then their sound of fear is then being turned into music and then given back to themselves.

So it's all like a very subjective process as well.

So if someone is really into Japanese ambient music,

Would they be getting the same thing from someone who likes,

I don't know,

Like heavy metal or something?

It's going to be,

Yeah,

Different voices,

Different choices for sure,

You know?

For sure.

Yeah,

It's really interesting to see how the world of AI and technology is progressing art and like,

With those visuals that you did for me,

They're still mind-blowing.

You know,

I look at them and I can't quite conceive of them exactly how you even made them or how they kind of evoke the feelings and emotion they do.

I don't know if you could tell me a little bit more of what process you use to make those type of visuals.

I mean,

Like,

The biggest thing to point out is that it wasn't just me,

I was kind of there guiding it in a way.

So,

I mean,

Like,

Someone wrote the algorithm,

A lady called Kathleen Croson,

And then somebody wrote some movement thing in there,

So you can change the movement and zoom in and zoom out and stuff.

And then it was there,

Then you gave me the music and you gave me,

Like,

Some notes of the different places.

And what I did then is,

With these visual algorithms,

You have two ways of guiding it,

Really,

Two major ways.

Like,

One is by putting in images and the other one is by writing these text prompts.

So,

What I did was I found fauna and flora from the different areas,

The different tracks.

You sent me some pictures too,

So I was using that as the kind of aesthetic and,

Like,

The image base.

And then I was writing in these notes that you sent me of,

Like,

Kind of these,

Like,

Touch points of what they evoked for you.

And then you just get the process going and then it's making these strange interpretations and interpolations between,

Like,

Different images and scenes and feelings.

And it's kind of feeding all the information you give it,

And then it's giving you something.

So,

Yeah,

So by the end,

It's gone through this process.

It's kind of gone through me,

It's gone through you,

It's gone through these genius technicians who wrote these,

These AI with their,

Like,

Creative coding.

And yeah,

It's super collaborative.

And so,

From,

Like,

A layman's point of view,

It's like you're inputting words into a computer program and images as well,

And then,

Like,

Guiding it.

Exactly,

That's exactly it.

You're kind of,

You're at the machine and you're tweaking and you're pulling and you're,

Like,

Quite often you press,

Like,

Generate and it comes out and it's like,

That's not right.

And you have to go back again.

And when you do anything like this,

It's really good,

But I think it needs a little bit more like this.

And you can even change the order of the words and it will have an effect.

Or,

Like,

If you put a particular descriptive word in there,

Like,

It will have more of an effect than a different word.

So you're,

You're,

Like,

Playing around with these parameters,

These tiny little details.

I've been,

I've done that with the online generators,

Like the mini Dali.

So I've tried to see if I can sort of recreate reality and make snapshots of things that have happened.

Like,

And you said,

It's like you pull the words,

You change it,

Sort of sunset or sunrise,

Or these little edits can sort of create large variation.

What type of reality were you recreating?

I was,

I was trying to,

I was trying to recreate sort of old,

Old sessions that I did and old experiences I had.

I wanted to see how close I could get the AI to create the reality I'd experienced.

So some of them were pretty scarily close.

Yeah.

And it was just that basic simulator,

But yeah,

You really,

I really had to play with it quite a lot to get,

To get the wording right.

But it was,

It's quite,

It's quite amazing what you can get,

What you can get out of it,

You know?

I mean,

I love that idea of,

Of using it as like a component of reality.

And if you are,

I think memory in particular,

So I made one for my grandma,

And she's,

She's got Alzheimer's.

She's,

She's,

She's pretty good considering she got diagnosed about two years ago,

And she's still,

She's still there.

And when I see her,

It's nice just to talk about the past because her eyes light up and she's,

Her memory is really bang on.

And she's telling me about affairs she had with German prisoners of war and stuff like that.

And I was wondering if I could,

I could take that kind of process and I could,

I could use the AI to kind of hypnotize her or something.

So I got all these images,

Old family photos,

Postcards of this place we used to have picnics at.

Like some,

Some other like,

I put in some,

Some like botanical things of like her favourite flowers.

And then in the,

The,

The word part,

I was writing down old memories of us having a picnic by this,

This castle.

And then I kind of,

I press go,

It came out,

Looked really pretty.

And I was like,

Okay,

I think I'm onto something here.

I showed it to my grandma and she's like,

I feel sick Sam.

It just like,

It didn't,

It didn't hit the mark.

But if we,

If,

If there is like this,

This exponential rate of growth with these technologies,

Then I love the idea of just,

Just being a family or a bunch of friends and you're just feeding these algorithms,

Old memories and these little artefacts and mementos.

You have like photos,

You have postcards,

You have memories and you kind of,

You're writing all this down and it's giving you,

It's giving you all these opportunities to add parameters and to finally detail this thing.

And you click generate and it makes a five minute video for you.

And it's,

It's like this,

This way of kind of being in a time machine or like a portal to memory.

And you're all sat around and you're drinking beer and eating snacks and talking about the past.

And I think it's really neat.

I don't think we're too far away,

Like five,

10 years maybe.

Yeah.

It's interesting to think how people are going to use it practically or how it gets used from sort of creating art like we did,

Or like you said,

Creating nostalgia or,

You know,

Contextualizing memories.

There are a lot of uses for it.

And,

And yeah,

With,

With machine learning potentially being sort of exponential,

You know,

It's,

It is really interesting to think about where it's going to go.

I mean,

There's a lot of AI generated music as well,

Which is sometimes a bit scary because I listened to bits and it sounds quite good,

But I always think what makes music interesting is the mistakes that people make in it and their sort of vulnerability that gets in the music,

You know,

That the machine will never really,

Unless of course you can feed,

Feed vulnerability.

Don't,

Don't,

Don't you think they're making mistakes already though?

That's kind of,

I think the AI is making too many mistakes and it,

It just sounds,

I mean,

Like,

Cause,

Cause I've done all these,

These like AI projects I've done,

I always,

I always try and bring it to the,

To the human aspect.

It's like the human listening,

The human who's,

Who's part of the process or the human that's trying to get something from the art that is valuable to them.

And like I did,

I did a thing on,

On Radio Free,

A late junction where I,

I took the audience's dreams and then I,

I fed these into,

Into a language model.

So this language model was,

Was looking at the linguistic structure of the words and finding these,

Finding these trends and themes within it.

It's like picking out on repeated like themes and atmospheres and places,

Names,

Like any,

Anything the algorithm can understand about language it was trying to get from,

From,

From these dreams that I,

That I've given it.

And then from there it,

It makes a new dream,

Like completely new.

It's like,

It's like William Burroughs cut up technique 2.

0 or 3.

0.

It's like,

It's not just taking the words and like putting them in a new order.

It's like learning from what it's been fed and it's making something completely novel based on those themes and those ideas.

And then I had,

Then I had these AI simulated collective dreams where it was made from these thousands of dreams we collected over the radio.

And then like to make that into music,

I had like a choice to make.

And for me to make people all feel like they're in the same dream,

You can do that a lot better without any algorithmic music.

Like you can do that a lot better as just human beings in a room playing instruments together.

Because I think,

I think sound and music just is,

Is this kind of fast track way into the squishy parts of human experience.

I think it's this kind of the most human of all our expressions of art.

And the idea of,

Of that being too technical feels alienating to me.

So until,

Until they sound less scratchy and terrifying and kind of hollow and,

And just like creepy,

I,

I think I might have to wait a little bit.

You got to wait till they start to sound like your own demos,

Right?

That's like,

That's actually the new thing now is like,

You can,

You can feed your,

Your music into a model that you can have your,

Everything you've ever made Aaron,

You can do this process.

And the same way the algorithm was looking through the dreams and finding kind of substance and content that it can replicate,

It'd be doing the same thing with your music.

It'd be looking at different,

Yeah,

Different like sound waves and shapes and then predict what would happen next based on what it's learned.

So you can come out and you,

You hear yourself reflected in this new perspective,

Like the,

The non-human process is showing you like a new avenue of humanness for you to walk down.

And that's like,

Yeah,

There's a guy in Berlin who's already doing that.

And this is another guy called Dada Barts,

The other guy is called Moises.

And they're just,

They're just really smart people.

And it's,

It's like happening now.

The music thing is not too far away.

Like even as like an Ableton plugin that anyone can use.

Yeah.

It's interesting to think about where it's ultimately going to go,

You know,

Because lots of people talk about,

You know,

There are popular theories of our,

Of our own existence being a simulated existence,

You know,

And I guess the way these AIs are advancing is making that look like it could be more of a probability,

Right?

Or something that we could imagine,

You know,

That there's a whole bunch of sort of infinite programming behind this experience that we're having,

Right?

Yeah,

It's conceivable.

And there's lots of really smart theoretical physicists who,

Who really like the theory as well.

So who knows?

But I mean,

Even that in itself,

If you were to find out this was a simulation,

Would it be freeing for you?

Or would it just,

Or life would lose its meaning and luster?

Or would you freak out?

Or would you embrace it?

I mean,

Personally,

Yeah,

I'm kind of on the edge.

Sometimes I feel like I kind of see the edge of it.

And I feel elements of that.

But I guess it's what you do with the experience is what it comes back to.

I mean,

Life is so absurd right now,

Anyway,

Isn't it?

I think we've,

Do you know what I mean?

Like,

Like hearing about that bridge go down in Crimea,

And it being part of the reason it happened is because they thought there was like a boat on the water.

And the boat on the water signaled the bomb to go off.

So then the Russian military say this is because our military dolphins didn't protect the water.

And you're like,

What the,

What the fuck is going on with the water?

I mean,

I just love it.

Whenever anyone talks about military dolphins,

That just takes me back to sort of my childhood and dreaming of being a military dolphin trainer,

Which is clearly something I missed out on.

But you know,

The world.

.

.

Say again?

They needed training.

They weren't trained well enough.

I think I would have freed them all and sort of just swam off like the big blue,

Just gone off with them.

Like,

You know,

They could have trained me.

But I do think as the world becomes more and more surreal,

There's almost more reality in these,

I don't know how to put it,

Constructed consciousnesses or this notion of intelligence of itself,

Rather than us creating some sort of cultural intelligence narrative,

Hey,

This is happening,

This is what you buy,

This is where you work,

This is what you do,

As that becomes less meaningful to people's existence,

I feel,

For maybe our generation,

The younger generation.

I mean,

You see it in the gaming world,

A lot of culture happens online through games and people experiencing,

You know,

These imagined realities,

Which are really productive for people,

Especially during lockdown.

I know that like,

You know,

My son,

It was really good for his mental health to be able to sort of play online with loads of kids.

And it looks like they're shooting people.

I think they are sort of digitally.

But when you read the scientific papers,

Because I wanted to check in on it,

I was a little bit worried.

And it seems to be very healthy for people to come together in a digital space and creative problem solve,

Even if that looks on the surface like a fight,

It's very valuable for the way the human mind works.

And so,

You know,

Ultimately,

Like the experience that we have,

You know,

And how we can use AI to help that,

Whether it's notions,

Like you've been coming up with in the book of how we can feed back some of the beauty,

You know,

And be able to perceive it,

You know,

Or training dolphins.

It's quite a broad one.

Well,

It feels like we've been given access to a new space of reality.

And this new space of reality is kind of splintered off,

Like we weren't able to come together and mobilise in this kind of way before,

Before,

Like digital world,

Like even like first web and stuff.

And I think there's this idea when you're using these,

These,

These AI's is what you're using is processes that make things in latent space.

And latent space,

You could quite easily just,

Just,

Just call that like an imaginary field.

And if you are in these spaces,

In the same way your son is playing these games,

It's like without that game,

He couldn't communicate with these people from all over the world,

Learn social skills,

Learn problem solving,

Like in best case scenario when they're actually world building,

And they're actually Yeah,

Like Minecraft.

Their imagination and their kind of hopes and their taste in what makes a nice place.

I mean,

I did find out when he was world building because he did the Minecraft thing and he was,

He was running a slave diamond mine,

Which I've,

Which I've outlawed.

He was going to villages,

Taking children and he had some sort of underground mine where he had all these children mining diamonds.

He swore to me that it was ethical,

But I have a zero tolerance policy on child mining in any dimension.

So,

It's interesting how the,

How some of the archetypes of power and corruption maybe even proliferate in these imagined spaces.

Did your dad ever say that to you when you were a young person,

Just like saying,

Sorry son,

But no child mines.

No,

No,

No.

Unfortunately,

I didn't like these,

These,

These spaces didn't exist for me.

I mean,

Where did we,

Where did we learn about things like ethics though?

Because I think I know it's a challenging one.

It's how do you have an ethical take on things,

But I guess as an old school individual,

Just the idea of child diamond mining for someone's benefit is just,

I find it challenging.

So,

I know like slavery,

No,

Childhood slavery,

No,

No.

Yeah,

It's a bit of a no go.

No,

No,

No.

Resource,

That's a no,

No.

But if I came,

He wouldn't,

He wouldn't have learned that lesson in such like a kind of visceral way.

So,

Yeah.

Like comics and films and stuff.

I mean,

It's,

Do you know what I mean?

It's always worth,

It's always worth kind of like thinking what we were doing at that time.

And,

And this acceleration of information and,

And learning and not,

Not,

Not just the fact that people are learning more and they have more information at their fingertips.

Like the,

The ways in which they are learning is,

Is more powerful.

Yeah.

Well,

They have the power of gods,

You know,

To be able to sort of start a child mine and build a whole,

You know,

Cloud city out of the crystals from your mind.

It's like,

That's pretty,

That's quite powerful in a way,

You know,

To have that opportunity.

Next,

Next one is like,

If he's doing that in a group,

They have to like think of the distribution of wealth and learn about labor.

I mean,

It's,

It's interesting that there's,

There's this kind of shadow world happening at the same time as this one.

It's like,

And there's a parallel,

There's like these archetypes keep coming up,

The sort of archetype of power corrupting and control and wealth,

You know,

Through these digital spaces,

Even though,

Like you said,

They're completely imagined,

They could be anything.

You seem to have these archetypes still creeping into these spaces that have even the basics of our physics,

You know,

Which is one of the things which is,

Which,

Which I sort of ruminate on,

Because however creative you can be,

Whatever you can make,

Certain elements seem to stick,

As long as you're viewing it from this body,

With these senses,

And this experience,

There's only so far you can go,

You know.

You had the one about like,

History,

Like they say about history repeating,

But like history rhyming.

I think the ways repeat,

But like sometimes they,

They have like a different feeling or a different effect or a different kind of stimulus that's making me think of these things.

I think things are,

We are in like a different realm,

We're in like a different reality now to what it was 20 years ago or something.

I think these archetypal things that they run very,

Very deep,

I mean,

We're talking like 66,

000 years of being like the human beings we are now.

That's a lot of time for repetition and these archetypal kind of figures and feelings and energies.

Do you,

Do you spend a lot of time when you're thinking about archetypes,

Like thinking about those,

The kind of root of them and what they were like?

I mean,

Us being,

Imagine being an artist 66,

000 years ago,

You're doing the same thing in the respect that you're,

You're channeling something deep inside and then you're communicating it to like your peers.

But I don't know how… Yeah,

Same thing.

You'd come up with like a really good song on the bone flute and stick and you'd be like,

Man,

This is amazing.

Someone would hear it when you didn't know and you're practicing,

You come back to the spot and everyone would be like,

Listen to this guy's tune.

You'd be like,

That was my tune.

I wrote that the other day on the rock,

Like what's going on?

And then they'd be like,

No,

That's my song,

I wrote it.

So yeah,

Same archetypes of the music business were probably in effect 66,

000 years ago.

People will always want to steal a good tune and always want to claim the benefits that come with it.

Maybe they didn't know what stealing was then.

I mean,

But I guess what I'm kind of hinting at,

Imagine if you were sat around the fire and you see in the flames this like figure of like a dragon or something,

Then you write a song about the dragon and someone comes to you and it's like,

That's amazing.

I had a dream of this thing you sang about and I've never heard anyone speak about it before.

And then like someone else hears this song and it's like in the next kind of camp.

And then it kind of,

It's this thing that just ignites people's imagination and it becomes a real kind of viral hit in like minus 70,

000 BC.

And I think it's interesting that that dragon could then come back again,

It can still be.

But the question is,

Did you come up with the dragon or was the dragon there?

Because I have some sort of,

I kind of have a belief that a lot of these archetypes in a way,

Like in a Jungian sense,

They exist in their own right.

So you're tapping into something and I've definitely had that feeling when I'm writing songs that you're kind of pulling something down.

Something's coming through.

I don't always really,

I mean,

You can author things,

But being an author is a strong word.

And so.

.

.

I've heard of this idea of the overmind,

The overmind being like,

Tell me if I'm wrong,

My friend was telling me about it the other day,

But she explained it as kind of like this space in between your subconscious and like your conscious,

Your waking life and your dreaming life.

And it's where all abstract thoughts happen.

She also called it like the womb mind or the love mind.

This is like potentially Jung's idea of the collective unconscious,

Right?

Exactly.

Yeah,

It's like very,

Very similar,

But the way she was describing it,

Like there's this writer called H.

D.

Hilda Doolittle,

And she's got a book called Visions and Ecstasies.

And she says it's like a jellyfish and these jellyfish,

They're kind of,

They're living in the collective consciousness and your individual subconscious.

And whilst you're awake in this overmind,

The jellyfish lets its tentacles down.

And this is when like the two worlds,

Kind of the boundaries between the two soften and dreams start to manifest and the world gets a little bit strange.

Like the barrier between waking life and dream is kind of slightly blurred.

And I think this is like the sweet spot.

And is this what you're investigating in your work potentially?

Absolutely,

Yeah.

It's like I'm really interested in like these boundaries.

Like can you make people feel like they're dreaming when they're awake?

Like can you soften the boundary between like collective consciousness and consciousness?

And these things like,

Even playing around with like fact and fiction and stuff,

I have like different psyches that I represent through different musical projects.

And they have like a very detailed kind of backstory and they all speak to each other.

And I think it's,

I keep going back to like ancient art,

But I think that's kind of what a function of that art was.

I think if people were using it,

It's all speculative of course,

But if people were using it as a way of having a sense of kind of time and space and community,

And if they were using art as a way of communicating something that's a little bit harder to do than words,

Words alone,

Then entering these spaces again,

It really opens up these kind of questions.

And one thing I've been thinking as well is like,

If I do,

Like fingers crossed,

If everything goes through as it's going already,

Like we could be doing this in different cities and we could be doing these,

At the end of the day,

I guess they'd be like dream surveys.

You can see what Rio de Janeiro is dreaming,

Or you can see what Reykjavik is dreaming,

Or like anywhere in the world.

And then you could be running these kind of high computational kind of tasks through there as well.

And you could be finding the collective dreams and seeing these trends that are coming through and seeing if any of them predict the future.

See if any of them kind of beautifully dovetail with big old archetypal stories and see if there is like a dragon that's making its way through Japan and like into the Southeast Asian continents.

And then you're like,

You're able to see at scale and in detail the subconscious and collective consciousness forces that are running through the world.

And I think to be making art out of that information is just like a really blessed resource.

I've been lucky enough to receive so many dreams and it's like a very,

It's a very personal medium.

It's a very strange thing to have in your hands and then to help people feel like they're in this space in between waking life and dream and to play with these different facets of what dreams can do for you.

It's really,

Yeah,

It's really kind of comic book.

I feel it's very,

It's very kind of like extreme in its way.

It's a very colorful,

Rich place to be operating as an artist.

And potentially something people need more of,

Something that's lacking from our culture.

People are very work focused,

Outcomes focused,

And not everyone,

Sure,

There are lucky people who manage to hold that space,

But generally culture is kind of squeezing us to have an outcome or to be productive.

And those kinds of narratives run through a lot of the culture that I grew up in and a lot of the self valuation is based around that because obviously anyone could have the most prophetic,

Beautiful dream,

More beautiful than anything else,

Not to sort of judge beauty,

But rather than a value system based on how much did you make today?

How much did you make in your life?

What's the value of your work?

It becomes a little bit more fanciful,

And I think elements of that are missing from the culture and people suffer from that because life becomes so concrete and it has to always be so serious and so real,

And taking it more into the surreal.

Yeah,

I mean,

In a way,

It's people just thinking like algorithms,

Isn't it?

They're having a very narrow task.

That narrow task is to work within the constraints of the company they're working in to maximize their effectiveness of what they're doing,

And then just to optimize like their business life and promotions and spending more time getting more money,

Which is like the ultimate kind of barometer of their success.

But the whole time it's like there's this kind of meaning lost.

There's this kind of,

Whether you see it as like a spiritual thing or an artistic thing or maybe something else.

Well,

Like you said,

Part of programming,

Right?

So,

The programming of the human mind,

It's important to have some spaces that aren't fully conceived and some potential value that is in a more surreal,

Un-squishable,

Creatable space,

You know?

It's nice not to know,

And it's nice to have the privilege of boredom sometimes.

And like I've definitely benefited from it.

I'm like incredibly privileged in that sense.

I mean,

During that as well,

Though,

I've had hardship and financially,

Like my life is very rarely secure.

I think it's always like.

.

.

As an artist.

Yeah,

I mean,

That's the thing.

You kind of make a sacrifice quite a lot,

Especially if you're kind of not a successful one,

Which I'm not.

Well,

I mean,

I personally would see you as being a successful artist,

But you know,

If you're measuring it in money,

Then only you know what your PRS checks,

You know,

Turning in or I got one today,

Actually.

Yeah.

I got £99.

86.

Oh,

Well,

Congrats.

That's great.

I mean,

Yeah.

Yeah,

But these measures that we've got on ourselves is like,

I own a very rich kind of.

.

.

I enjoy my brain for the most part,

Like it doesn't like give me too much shit.

It's kind of like that sometimes,

But for the most part,

It's having fun and it's curious and it's wrestling with these kind of ideas that I find exciting.

Every now and again,

My project lands and things happen.

So it's just.

.

.

Yeah,

It's always dangerous kind of like looking at someone's life.

I mean,

That person who is really determined and really kind of like,

You know,

Like really thriving in this business and get promotions and get loads of money,

They probably do a really nice life because they've put their mind to something and they're achieving it.

I think it's important to have goals and to have something to work towards,

Because quite a lot of people don't.

That's why I'm quite interested in like the other type of dreams,

Small d dreams and wishes of the future.

And like,

Because I've always liked writing speculative fiction,

I like writing futures that I think could happen,

Things that are just on the edge of your fingers or these technologies that have not been used together before and put them together with one machine and seeing what the implications of such a technology could be.

And even I do a thing for my friends,

I call it like science fiction kind of business plans or something where I'll just interview them about their life,

Like where they come from,

What their big kind of motivations are,

What they're doing,

How they fell into it,

Why they love it.

And then like ultimately what they see like the most beautiful kind of untouched,

Sweet version of that idea to be.

And then kind of plot it 20 years in the future,

Everything's gone perfectly for them and the idea,

Write a little introduction to their day,

And then kind of like,

You know,

The idea,

Write a little introduction to their novel,

Which describes it all,

Give it to them.

And then you have like this real nice tangible little kind of memento of your hopes and dreams,

Maybe your fears as well.

And once you start thinking like that,

You kind of cast your imagination to like kind of future,

You can really start building towards things.

Like I love this idea of setting a trajectory that may be a little bit too far and ambitious and just seeing what happens when you just fall short of it.

Shoot for the moon and you might just hit the stars,

Right?

Exactly that.

And I think we can all do that to a degree.

Just the problem is quite a lot of people are completely like done in by an unkind,

Unfair world.

And just the idea of thinking you could do something is so abstract and so bizarre that they've probably never even thought about it.

It's like,

I had an interview with Viv Albertine from The Slits,

And she's talking about making music as like an all-female punk band,

And it just being such a weird,

Abstract thing that it didn't exist.

And then they started to do it as kind of like the first pretty much.

And then the moment they did,

They obviously inspire others and then things happen.

But before they did do that,

Just it being such a weird concept,

It's like when the big Spanish ships came in to like Mexico and all the Mayan people,

They were so big that they couldn't see them.

I think it's like a similar thing.

I think we need our dreams to connect to potential realities that might be completely obfuscated,

Completely there but not seeable,

Completely invisible.

Yeah,

It's definitely the culture needs to be setting its sights maybe slightly higher than training dolphins for war and blowing up bridges.

I definitely have hopes that we can achieve slightly more.

But where can we find your work,

Sam?

People who are interested in finding out more,

Potentially even going to one of these experiences you've talked about?

You can just go on my Instagram maybe.

Yeah,

Connect with me.

Maybe.

Yeah,

Connect up to the Instagram.

And what are you on there?

Sam Potter?

Is there any hyphens or slashes or?

Just three underscores.

Underscore Sam underscore Potter underscore?

No,

Underscore underscore underscore.

Sam Potter.

P-O-T-T-E-R.

That's it.

That's it.

So people can find you.

And I mean,

I would love to experience one of these events that you've been talking about.

It sounds like something that would be great fun.

Yeah,

Hopefully soon.

And we're just getting into research and development.

Maybe we'll need some of these pigs at some point soon.

I'm always there.

And have you ever,

I mean,

I always think that like,

There's always the chance that some sort of government agency will want to headhunt someone like you at some point for a nefarious means.

So I hope that you stay on the map and keep it artistic.

And don't go into sort of evil dolphin training.

I mean,

It's got the potential to be really evil.

And I think it's the same when you're using these technologies.

Like,

There is,

There is like a lot of bad that they can probably will do for like,

The human experience.

Like it's,

Like they're already been used as like parole officers and stuff like that,

Which is just terrifying.

Imagine being in prison.

You come out and instead of it being human beings,

Who've maybe lived a different life to you,

But at least they're made of the same matter and similar,

They're in like a similar society that they're able to see remarks in your file that show that you have displayed being a good human,

A good prisoner.

And all these kind of things,

Then replacing those people with an automated process,

That's just looking for particular information.

It's just like,

It's incredibly fucked up.

Like really fucked up.

I think like,

There's at least one state in America that does that now.

Wow.

And then like,

You have like inherent bias in a lot of these algorithms as well.

Like they're made from these training sets.

And quite often these training sets,

They're not,

They're not kind of like,

They have these biases.

There's just too many white faces.

It doesn't necessarily understand what a person from Sierra Leone looks like,

Compared to like a different African country.

And when I use these things as well,

It's still,

It's coming from these problems that it has.

So then you have to be really careful of making sure that what you're doing is representative of the people who have contributed.

So it's like,

There's a lot of stuff to be sorted out that probably will never be sorted out,

Because nobody's funding any of the ethics for it,

Really.

Like these tech companies should be kind of lost in the middle of the jungle.

The government's not doing anything.

It's not like,

It's kind of the wild,

Wild west a little bit.

The community needs these new companies who are coming forward.

Like there's a really good one called Stability AI.

They,

Yeah,

They're independent.

They're not motivated by profits and profits alone.

And then hopefully their models become the more successful ones in this monopoly and then things good can happen.

But I find it interesting using them because I think,

I think there has been something that people have not been exploring properly and that is the ways of using them that can help us,

Help us understand ourselves,

Help us create a new perspective to see the world from.

And hopefully that the more projects I do,

The bigger the budgets I can work with and then really kind of inspire people to do the same.

It's kind of like painting with nuclear waste or something.

I don't know.

It's like a,

It's a potentially very hazardous,

Dangerous material that if I'm not doing it as an artist,

I imagine someone down the line is going to do it as a corporation or a corrupt government or a propagandist.

It's a powerful tool.

It's a powerful tool.

So it's great to see such beautiful art being made from it,

You know,

And that's definitely what like inspires me and I'm really always interested to check in on.

Yeah.

Well,

Thank you so much for your time.

I think talking to you has been really inspirational for me and it's definitely given me some food for thought.

So thank you.

Great.

Thanks again,

Sam.

So yeah,

I'll look out for some of these projects that you got up and coming and I hope that we can be doing some more work together in the future as well.

Yeah,

Definitely.

Yeah.

I mean,

The whole kind of like healing,

Meditative kind of side of things is really running for a lot of stuff I'm doing as well.

Yeah,

I think the interesting narrative is like what it really comes down to is creating these spaces for people to find a way to heal themselves because I have a belief and my training is about the individual being able to heal and having the ability to heal.

And so I think a lot of the time online there's a bit of a nefarious commercialization of what healing is like,

Hey,

This specific frequency is going to heal you,

This,

Just join my online course and you're going to get healing.

And that side of it is challenging because really any individuals can heal themselves but what really helps is giving them that space to create it.

And I think that space where people can find a way of decompressing from their day and the things that are making them feel sick,

I think that the traditional space used 66,

000 years ago is this liminal space explored traditionally by medicine people,

Shamans and musicians.

That is the space where people can have that self-reflexive element,

Where they can see themselves again outside of pain,

Outside of challenge and re-imagine themselves like you said,

Have that view of their future,

Of what they are,

Of what they could be and that can be a healing experience.

And that's that space that's being opened up by AI where people,

You know,

Because when you go on YouTube it's advert this or news that and like these worlds that are very sort of ambient is a weak word maybe but hypnotic,

Meditative and they kind of open up a space,

They create,

You know,

Calm is a strong word but they create something.

They create something.

I think if you really tie the people into it as well,

Like I've been playing around with things like biofeedback where you can link people's breath and heartbeat to stuff you've made.

You're like,

Oh,

You really like plugging people in and then,

But it's like,

It's the spot,

Isn't it?

Where everyone wants to go,

It's this like liminal latent healing space and once they're there,

Hopefully they can go on their own little journey to feeling better at the end of it.

But that's what people need and I think that's what I personally think that's what some of these technologies can offer is a space where people can kind of plug in.

It's not an overly commercialized or cultured space,

Like you said,

There's biofeedback systems in place.

So it's a place where people can really find a way of dropping their brainwave patterns and de-stressing and finding a way of healing,

Whether it's sort of physically,

Mentally,

Inter-dimensionally,

Whatever it is,

You know,

And it's one of the more interesting spaces.

I mean,

Yoga studios in the dark get sort of 80% of the way there,

You know,

With the right sound,

But I think.

.

.

For sure,

People don't know how to conceptualize it.

I don't think people know how to.

.

.

It's a fuller version though,

Do you know what I mean?

Like with,

I think all the imagery,

All the ephemera around it,

I think the music for the most part is just incredibly.

.

.

What's the problem with being a musician,

Isn't it?

It's like you kind of become super critical.

You know what I mean?

If you get all those things right,

I think it'd be really worth exploring like a real.

.

.

I don't know,

I feel like there's a way of doing this that's better anyway.

Like even seeing like the last stuff that Briony knows has been doing and stuff,

It's just not particularly there for me.

It was really thin,

Kind of.

I think there's a way of doing things where it looks like really striking and beautiful and everything that's speaking to the senses is kind of like really considered and really beautifully designed.

Like the spaces you're entering,

Like the sounds you're listening to,

The sound design,

The music,

Like the guidance.

I think there's a way of kind of packaging it,

Bringing it together into like a different realm that is less kind of tied to all that kind of new age baggage or something.

Definitely,

And less authored.

I think that's the thing that AI brings to it,

Is it's not about one person's choice.

Hey,

This is what's going to make you relax.

This is my visual.

It's about generating something that comes from the person who's experiencing it,

Potentially,

And then from this greater collective unconscious.

That kind of combination and interplay is the space because I think it is challenging when it's sort of one person saying,

Hey,

This is what I play.

This is what's nice for me.

There's quite a gap there.

And yeah,

I think the new age is inherently,

There are so many challenges with that space,

But there's also a lot of good work that goes on and some people resonate with it,

Which is great.

But I think for the sort of average person who's sort of finds yoga difficult,

Who finds meditation painful,

Who doesn't sort of like the idea of doing weird stuff,

But really likes beauty and really connects to.

.

.

There is a lot of beauty in the world,

A lot of beauty in culture as well.

It's kind of like,

I don't want to be bad-mouthing,

Especially someone like Brian Eno.

We love Brian Eno.

We love him.

We love his work.

We wouldn't bad-mouth him.

He found a way of getting people into their parasympathetic nervous system and to activate the vagus nerve and do all this with just sound.

But I think that's quite an interesting point because that's something that you see sort of sold a lot and then the parasympathetic nervous system,

What is it versus the sympathetic nervous system?

I've been studying it.

I'm doing my medical degree.

So,

We're always using both systems.

There's no point when you're either in just sympathetic or just parasympathetic.

They work in harmony.

The vagus nerve,

Cranial nerve 10,

Is the longest nerve in your body that is on the parasympathetic nervous system,

But it's always activated.

It just depends to what extent and a lot of that goes back into that personal experience because there hasn't been one scientific study done.

There isn't one medical paper that says,

This is the sound,

This is the experience that lets someone go deeper into the parasympathetic versus the sympathetic,

Relax more and therefore be able to regenerate more.

There isn't a uniform formula for that.

You mean like it's like cross-cultural or something?

There's just no universal fix?

There is no universal thing.

There are situations and stimuli you could say,

If you get someone to lie down,

If you get them to breathe in a certain way,

If you get them to visualize something of beauty or nature,

If you get them to hear a relaxing tone which doesn't have repetitive sound or a melody that you can latch on to,

That generally speaking will help an individual drop their brainwave pattern and therefore calm their systems and go more into the parasympathetic to let the parasympathetic overtake because they're both they're sort of fighting,

They're always happening.

But there isn't a formula,

You know,

There isn't this one sort of guaranteed,

There isn't one sort of guaranteed way to do it.

And I think like you said that leads back into your work as well where it's about how do you let the individual find the way of unlocking that space for them because for some people it might be like heavy metal and fire and other people it might be this sort of super ambient bells and ice,

You know.

It's a massive drone thing and a huge sound system like that to me is probably going to be more effective than like 90% of like quickly put together ambient music.

But then you get the really good stuff and that stuff really really works for me,

That real kind of like weapons grade kind of ambient music.

What is it that you use for that?

There's this Kenyan artist called KMRU,

He's just magic and he's weaving in lots of field recordings and it's got like this real,

It feels like an archaeology of a moment or something.

His last record that he's putting out soon is made up of lots of recordings from Nairobi and kind of tower blocks and stuff.

KMRU?

Yeah,

I mean his stuff really reminds me of like John Hassell.

And so do you sort of lie back,

Turn the lights off,

Get the earbuds in and take time to.

.

.

Definitely and like I can meditate a lot better with that kind of music than I can do without it.

I think there's something to be said as well of like once I do get down there,

I'm not like,

I'm not always like meditating.

Sometimes I'm doing that kind of David Lynch diving for a deeper fish thing where you're letting things kind of come to your attention and then they pass by.

But then sometimes something's just really fun to think about,

So I kind of dive in.

I really love this idea of taking people to a state where perhaps their parasympathetic nervous system is a little bit more engaged,

But once they're down there in this kind of deeper sea of consciousness to then go somewhere further.

So once you've taken people there,

You can then kind of tell a story or it'd be like a collective dream being told.

You're kind of,

You're taking people to a deeper place and then you're kind of letting them venture forth and it's not necessarily about finding a really kind of enlightened space,

But for them to play around in the tributaries and these underground systems and see where they end up.

Yeah,

I think that's,

I mean,

It's like a real magic in that and I haven't like,

I haven't experienced that that much outside of film.

I guess music,

But that's very subjective and that's just what my brain and lots of other people's brains do,

But to actually kind of quite openly kind of say that's what the plan is.

The plan is to take you up the streets,

Chill you out,

Calm you down,

Bring you to this place and then from there take you on an adventure.

It's like a real kind of goldmine.

That is the great adventure,

I think.

That's it,

I think you've hit the nail on the head there.

Come join.

Roll up,

Roll up.

I'm trying to get there.

I'm trying to get there.

What are your sessions like?

For sure,

Yeah,

Similar thing.

You try and create a space where people can sort of just drop that brainwave pattern,

Drop into their parasympathetic,

Activate more of the vagus nerve,

Have more time to decompress where they're not thinking,

I have to get to sleep for tomorrow.

And like you said,

Different things come through.

People come with very interesting stories about surreal experiences or people come with things that they might say are past lives or visions that they saw and I feel really privileged to hear those things and they're so surreal.

People will be like,

I went up with aliens and met Snoop Dogg and smoked a massive joint.

That's amazing.

I had no idea,

Like nothing I vaguely did had any relevance to try and create that.

I'm trying to sort of anti-create when I do it.

I'm not trying to be anything or play anything.

I'm just trying to create a bit of space between the silence and other people will say much more kind of relevant,

Oh I went and I saw myself as a child and I remembered the beauty of nature and I had this moment.

Or other people would just say,

Hey,

I thought about all my problems lots and that was pretty tough.

But I think there's value in it.

I think there is value in people taking a bit of time out and it is hard to do when we're busy with life or whatever it is,

Recording podcasts or finishing music or pitching for artist projects.

It does get kind of,

We all get carried away I think with that type of stuff.

I mean,

Maybe not you,

You seem chill.

Do you go to the gym and stuff like that as well?

Yeah,

Yeah,

I try and do some physical exercise as well.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Definitely.

The same thing as the gym really.

If you give yourself a lot of bit of time and then that's it.

That's it,

Yeah,

I agree.

Do you know what I mean?

It's exactly the same and it's all like feeding your happiness and your contentment.

For me to stay curious,

That's the best kind of currency of happiness for me.

It's like if I'm feeling particularly curious about something.

So yeah,

It's all just like this hierarchical thing of needs,

Isn't it?

It's like what we prioritize and spend time doing.

And I think being a semi-professional artist,

That's quite… You're professional,

Come on.

I get paid small amounts of money sometimes to do it.

But that's what I've decided to do.

And then,

I don't know,

It's just part and parcel.

It was only going to be obvious that I would have ended up doing stuff that dealt with these things like wellbeing and deeper concepts about the human experience.

I think wellbeing is kind of an outcome,

Right,

Of some of the work you do.

But it sounds like it's not.

And it can be a dangerous thing to aim for because that kind of creates,

That changes the hand that runs the algorithm,

Right?

Yeah,

But also,

I made a point a few years ago of making sure that my creative process was really fun and really enjoyable.

And by doing so,

And then that changed the type of projects I worked on as well.

I found that I was kind of veering towards stuff that actually was a little bit kind of spiritual,

Like small spiritual stuff,

Stuff that had to do with lots of people and collective consciousness and exploring the realms of dreams,

Etc.

And since doing so,

My life has been a lot happier.

So it's like,

Yeah,

It's nice.

It is nice to be an artist sometimes.

I think you hear writers talk about the brutal act of writing a book and it just sounds so unforgiving and fun when you talk about it.

When I wrote that book a few years ago,

I was just kind of writing the future I wanted to happen.

So researching it,

Writing it,

And then actually talking about it at places like the Science Museum and stuff,

It just gave me a lot of joy.

I think it may be a dangerous thing to ask for exactly,

Or to have any idea of something solid,

But if you're working towards it and your life is taking part in all these details and you feel it rubbing off on your life,

The tentacles of the overmind are getting into your reality.

Yes,

Indeed.

Yeah,

And I'm happy to know that you are keeping everyone's dreams safe,

For sure.

Better me than Zirkos,

I know he will.

Definitely.

Cool,

Sam.

Thanks again.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah,

Lovely chatting.

I'll let you know next time I'm in London.

Please do.

Yeah,

Hopefully we can catch up.

Sweet.

Cool.

Thank you.

Stay well.

Dream well.

Bye.

Bye,

Sam.

Bye,

Bye.

Thanks.