Jean-Michel Jarre embodies his mythical ‘Watchers,’ discusses the human relationship with AI and new album, ‘Equinoxe Infinity’ [Interview]

Jean-Michel Jarre has launched Equinoxe Infinity, 40 years following his fourth studio album, Equinoxe. Both albums are about “The Watchers,” animals which look ahead, speculating on which they might find. As an influence on Daft Punk, Gesaffelstein, and a lot more, Jarre is known as a pioneer in the digital, ambient, and new-age music genres. Amid the launch of his lauded Equinoxe Infinity LP, the French luminary sat down with Dancing Astronaut to talk about the about the album, his technological ventures, also Jarre’s hypotheses concerning the future of music and life as we know it.

Jarre has only arrived in New York — we all settle in talking the city and the ongoing press junket for the recently released album. Even the Grammy nominated composer clarifies the city’s hectic character, though he seems at home with New York’s bustle and hustle.

What are you doing in New York?

I’m here promoting my new album, Equinoxe Infinity. I’m also involved in a virtual reality functionality for its album on Saturday Dec 8 at [10:00 p.m. with Sutu out of Australia who was involved in the distinctive effects of the past Steven Spielberg film, Ready Player One.

My partnership with all @TheWaveVR will start with a show by SUTU tomorrow December 8th 7pm PST. If you want to be part visit https://t.co/9UnQLoMWvZ or even https://t.co/QdOdeDjnT4 for many details.
There will be a live stream on my facebook. pic.twitter.com/nKgmm9805q

— Jean-Michel Jarre (@jeanmicheljarre) December 7, 2018

December 12, I have a Q+A from the VR world. Going back to Europe to prepare yourself that.

Tell us about the virtual reality performance. Can VR play into the album?

I curious and interested by the options of VR. It s just such as Dancing Astronaut has been drawn up as a theory for VR since ’s who we’re in the VR space. We’re encouraging these DJs perform their own remixes of the album and to enter the virtual world.  I wished to explore many different technologies from virtual 3D, to VR, to 3D environments, and being spied on by artificial intelligence, among the topics of the album.

Do you believe that a VR world is an easy step for the entertainment arena?

Have you seen Ready Player One? The brilliant part was Stephen Spielberg re-enacted Stanley Kubrick’therefore The Shining where the main character’s virtual avatar goes into the scene of the Shinning using the twins, also opening the wrong door, and all the blood rushes by him. This is where AI and VR are quite exciting for the future.

The reason why I did the album as a soundtrack of just two potential futures with two distinct covers: you, expressing peaceful, green, positive mood and another one is much more dystopian because I think most of us have that choice. That ’ s for us to pick the album finished as a question mark.

What made you come out with the sequel to Equinoxe now? 

The idea of this being a continuation of the initial one and I ’ m not connected. Both albums are about those creatures known as “The Watchers. ” I’ve always been fascinated by the art of Michel Granger, who made the cover of Equinoxe.  I’m fascinated by these creatures. What happened to them now, and what’s going to happen in the future to them? The Watchers are whistleblowers both seeing new technology and surroundings. Tech can also be watching us, in order to deliver us products that we neglect ’t really need, moving deep into our merchandise lives. I wished to say a future where machine and man will be far closer and closer in our day-to-day life and how to deal with this. I envision the soundtrack hitting on two stocks represented on the album. This is the reason you have sunny, dynamic-pop moments and moments that are darker in precisely exactly the exact same bit of music.

The voice and lasts through the seventh and vocoder enters into the motion. Was this deliberate? What’s the thought behind “If The Winds Could Speak? ”

We’ll have the ability to live in 21st century just if we can evolve in great intelligence and decent faith both in surroundings and new technology. Both of these variables are more interdependent than we believe. About “If The Winds Could Speak” my thought was to start with the human voice and communicating them with cutting edge synthesis, which will be among the most advanced synthesis we’ve got. I wished to produce sounds that had elements of machine and person .

I really like the comment Dancing Astronaut did on “Robots Don’t Cry” because I might have called this track “Robots Don’t Cry, So Far” because I’m quite convinced that in the not too distant future, artificial intelligence will have the ability to produce original content, movies, songs, stories, and this is not something we need to worry about. Maybe we will re-position ourselves, as the individual that is imaginative, to use these parameters in ways that are distinct. So this idea of working with the granularly synthesized human voice and creating it into something quite human is precisely the idea behind “If The Wind Could Speak,” “Infinity,” and “Machines Are Learning. ” These tunes are using individual vocals, transforming it into granular synthesis, and then employing the harmonic content of the noises while having that human touch.

You present an pessimistic and optimistic view on the album. Do you believe human creativity isn’t any more than just mechanisms, or will individual creativity be difficult to interpret to AI?

Humans are only using 10 percent of their brains. AI can help people use the 90 percent left, which might open doors that we’ve never seen. This doesn must be terrifying. It can also be positive and interesting. Maybe our mind, in the future, the education system will differ and act like a tough drive to simply get info. Maybe it gets applying this advice to respond, stored in the cloud and making informed decisions. I don’t believe AI will stop production or founders at all, I think that it will position us in a different context.

It seems as if we’re working in conjunction with AI. This is a positive view of their future.

We should be optimistic by subversion. It s easy to be dark. We might go from the studio, also in two hours, we could do a dim tune. It s far harder not to be dark. To try and be humorous, and smart, and optimistic without being cheesy.

If you look around, the information stations obtain their views by researching and tapping the shadowy side of earth, where the positive side is not hot for a lot of us also it’s quite challenging. That is among those ideas to the project, to try and combine the dark and light side. It’s quite exciting in songs once you’re able to have more joyful positive moments concealing melancholy or the reverse.

Can there be a motion on the album that explains your attitude towards the long term and technology?

I’d say that I believe as a reaction to the darkness. I’m not always optimistic about the future, I’m only saying ‘I don’t know. ’ It’s not always going to be a Terminator dystopian type of universe, but I think it’s ’s interesting in an artistic project to explore this subject. “Robots Don’t Cry,” at 1 sense, is interesting because I utilized the Nanotron, among the very first digital virtual studio technology instruments. I need to make the statement which robots do ’t cry up to now.

Even the “If The Winds Could Speak” vocals have you wonder the noise ’s humanity, and also through the end means moving throughout time into the future. “Equinox Infinity” that the track, is an example about the idea of the journey to the future with a great deal of sounds, machine noise and nature sounds, but it finishes as a puzzle. I took quite a while to create this track, which is largely compatible with elements which are not necessarily compatible, and that may be quite upsetting and noisy at precisely exactly the exact same moment.

You’ve already been pioneer of fresh sounds your livelihood. What do you believe is sonic production ’s next frontier?

My wish and project is to establish a collaboration with AI. I wished to create the “Equinoxe Infinity” trail with AI, but it was not ready. The collaboration should be ready within the upcoming few months, for the next project. The kind of AI collaboration I experimented with has been an algorithm capable to mimic a Michael Jackson track or Beatles track, which is not what I was anticipating, or to fill the AI having a melody and it returns with variations of this melody, which ends up being fairly straight and fairly dull.

Mathematicians love Bach because he had a very mathematical way of songs, so that it s the best for artificial smart recreation and variant. Today, in 2018, there are far more theories that artists have to include, like a groove into the rhythm. The software that is right is not there yet, but it s coming soon. I love for people to challenge ourselves to help enhance AI and not be fearful of it.

On VR side, I really excited by developing alternative possibilities.

Space has been a motif on your work for half a century. Are there space topics in the album that relate to the connection between individual and technology?

I’m a huge fan of the Dancing Astronaut name. Because it s a title for a picture or an album, I was jealous. At the beginning of my profession, NASA asked me to incorporate the 25th anniversary of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center into my Houston show celebrating Texas’s 150th anniversary on April 5, 1986. I worked together with many Houston-based astronauts, including Ronald McNair, that was suppose to have played the saxophone on “Rendez-Vous VI,” recorded from distance into the concert.

McNair sadly passed from the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy, but I was urged to move in memory of the shuttle. Because the planet all of a sudden stopped exploring space, This was a turning point of exploration.

Next year we’re observing the 50th anniversary of the very first person on the moon, and it’s going to be broadcasted to the German French station, ARTE, to be the principle of a quite trendy displays called “Winter Moon” which will link everything out of individuals to the moon, and relationships with the moon.

It s interesting talking about dancing astronauts. Because dancing astronauts is pertinent to what pop culture is all about. Astronauts and pop culture’s explosion started at precisely exactly the exact same moment. In the 1960s and 70s distance in audio obsessed us, in enthusiasm. We were kind of dancing astronauts, also it looks like this identity was lost a bit, but I think it’s coming back together with movies such as Gravity, Interstellar, along with each of these Mars colonizing discussions, so the future belongs into Dancing Astronaut.

Well, shucks. That’s quite the compliment. Thank you, Mr. Jarre. 

With this new technology making creation more easy, it seems like we’ve got room for more exploration.

So true! It also ’ s additionally investigating the virtual space, although exploring space is not just exploring outer space. VR is precisely that. We’re like astronauts exploring a virtual world. By the day’s close, putting your foot is not the same as going into the virtual world. Say hello to the dancing astronauts.

*This interview was edited for readability and clarity.

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