Historia Praeterea
I have been fascinated by Gyzis' painting Historia ever since I first saw it. It was painted circa 1890, in a period when nationalism in Europe was rampant. While the painter was influenced by his own Greek identity in his works, this particular painting appears to distance itself from the trends of its time.
The main figure "writing" history radiates strength and resolve, attempting to record on the canvas an objective view. The figure of the child, supporting and influencing the main figure's hand, seems to represent the immature inner self of the main figure; the child that never grew up and is always present, while the child's concentration indicates that maturity (or the illusion of it) is inherent. The main figure holds a log of events and keeps both a right-angle rule (representing objective intent?) and a palette, which may represent the coloring of the historical records by the subjective perception of each individual historian.
The circle containing the scene, in my eyes, represents the cyclic course of history, which is never perceived by those dwelling inside it.
I have to admit that I didn't create this piece with the painting in mind. I wouldn't have attempted a rhythmic, house-like melody if that were the case. The connection occured to me after it was nearly complete. The circular chord progression of F#-minor, D-major, E-major and C#-minor dominates the arpeggios, which are all variations of the same one from the Yamaha MODX, even though they sound different every four measures. As they are arpeggios from the synthesizer, they remind me of the objective, right-angle rule of the main figure, within the circle of history that always appears different to those dwelling within it. The lead pluck sound from SurgeXT, with its imperfect expression, seems to be recorded by the brush that is moved by both arms. This main lead is complemented by a vocal-like pad sound from the Korg Wavestate and another, more conventional pad from Zebra Legacy.
This piece was released twice. The first time it was released under the title of "Historia" and now as "Historia Praeterea". The reason for this is that the first time I left far too many imperfections in the release. I was aware of them (and still am for some of them) but chose to leave it flawed in order to make it clear that it was not made with AI. Far too often we see artists being accused of not creating their music and having made it with a prompt-based AI service. I thought that leaving it with the imperfections of a human-made one-off performance for each part would make it apparent that this is a human made piece of music. After releasing it, I didn't like it and have now removed the original release and replaced it with one that isn't filled with imperfections.
I have decided that I will not be considering the tendency of our time to reject everything as AI-made. It is a phase that will pass and eventually we are going to be left with our actual works. At some point it is going to be clear which works of art are human-made and which ones are made by algorithms. And at the point, we will be left with the works we have made and the flaws that leave them hanging there somewhere between laziness and insecurity.