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Most musicians are not VJs. But if you still want to have appealing visuals to enhance your live music, AI can help. In this article we discuss an example that was made for Kay Slice, a Dutch-Ghanaian afro-futurism artist. The visual belongs to a live song that is getting wilder and that's why the visuals are getting more and more expressive. Below you can find the end result. This example uses Dall-E, a simple text-to-image system. With Dall-E you generate images and you can also ask the system to adjust the outside of an image or add elements to it. This is called outpainting. The above printscreen shows the interface of DALL-E in which an image of a sunrise in Accra, Ghana has been generated. The erase function was then used to remove a small border on the right side of the image and a new prompt (description) was entered to generate a new piece of photo. This produces the following result. The image has become a lot bigger and more futuristic because of this. If your image is large enough, you can download it from Dall-E and import it into iMovie or another video editing tool. In the example below, it was chosen to generate an elongated image with a frame added to the right side. Then iMovie was used to make the image move from left to right, making it appear as if a video is playing. You can also choose to move the image in other ways. For example from top to bottom. Despite the fact that the images are not perfectly hi-res - and they contain a mistake here and there - you can still make cool visuals by trying a lot that come into their own on a projection screen. Be aware Keep in mind that there are risks associated with using text-to-image systems such as Dall-E. These systems are often trained on copyrighted material and also include all the material you create yourself in their dataset. In addition, these systems have been trained on data from the internet that is not representative of society. The results are therefore often sexist or racist.

Sound & Vision is the national media archive and museum. Sound & Vision is based in Hilversum and serves most of the Dutch public broadcasters and has millions of hours of audiovisual, text, game and other content. It therefore offers many opportunities to experiment in the world of audiovisual research and design. This is important because heritage is meant to live and be reused. Open Culture Tech is a welcome addition to the growing portfolio of technology-driven projects with which the institute and its partners explore new possibilities for creative makers. Credits: Jorrit Lousberg As a public institution that exists to serve and facilitate the needs of the public, Sound & Vision places great value on the responsible and ethical application of new technology such as AI and AR. Ethical questions surrounding AI are endless and constantly evolving as technology advances. Open Culture Tech is a perfect example of an artistic and technology-driven initiative that can enhance the potential of new technology for the creative industry. Gregory Markus, founder of the RE:VIVE project and project leader at Sound & Vision states that “Open Culture Tech is a pioneering venture that can connect new tools with audiovisual electronic music performances. This lowers the barrier to entry to the point where any artist can explore this exciting new territory.” Credits: Jorrit Lousberg Collaborating with Thunderboom Records is not new for Sound & Vision. The institute was a partner in the WAIVE project and Open Culture Tech partner Superposition is also a long-term collaborator. As part of Open Culture Tech, Sound & Vision will activate its international network of creative, artistic and cultural partners to provide invaluable network collaboration, input from best practices and diverse user needs. This ensures that the results of Open Culture Tech end up in the hands of musicians from far and wide.

Thunderboom Records is the world's first robot record label. It probably sounds like every musician's worst nightmare. After all, what good are robots to musicians who can also make music and stand on stage? For Max Tiel and Joost de Boo, this question was exactly the reason to set up Thunderboom Records. WAIVE is an AI-driven DJ tool that uses sounds from Sound & Vision's audio archive material. Thunderboom Records was founded three years ago as a foundation to ensure that new technology always continues to add to our human creativity. As Max puts it: “We want to ensure that the latest technology, such as AI, enriches our creative expression as much as possible and strengthens the position of musicians in the music industry. We hope to prevent new technology from threatening the creative process of musicians.” Thunderboom Records does this by developing and testing creative technology concepts together with musicians and their audience. These are, for example, virtual robot artists who release new music together with human artists. But also unique tools with which a DJ can run live back-to-back with an AI system and receive creative suggestions. Fi is an AI-powered virtual artist who collaborates with human musicians. Fi has a unique fluid appearance. Does this mean that every musician should start working with AI? Absolutely not. “New technology is going to play an increasingly important role in the music industry and we especially want to help musicians to use this technology properly and safely.” Simply put, Thunderboom Records helps musicians better understand and take advantage of technology. This mission originated from the idea that technological developments, such as artificial intelligence and avatars, will continue to increase and will change the music industry even more radically in the coming years. But these new developments come with risks and it is important that artists are helped in this, says Joost. Joost (left) and Max (right) at the Audio Collaborative conference in London 2022. “It is not always clear what data is used to build an AI system and it is not always clear what happens to the intellectual property of the end users.” It is also often unclear to users why AI creates certain texts, pictures or melodies. “There are many cases where the AI even generates racist and sexist texts, images or music.” To make musicians resilient in the rapidly changing music industry, Max and Joost therefore give workshops and regularly speak at conferences and schools. “The Open Culture Tech project is a great way for us to further propagate our mission and to work together with musicians on a sustainable music industry in which public values are central and in which every musician is given the opportunity to work in a safe and critical manner. with the latest technology”. Visit www.thunderboomrecords.com for more information *This article is the first in a series of articles introducing the initiators of Open Culture Tech.

Open Culture Tech is an initiative to make the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) and Avatar technology more accessible to musicians in the Netherlands. It's all about sharing knowledge, experience and resources with which musicians can immediately start working in their live performances. Open Culture Tech does this by building a toolkit – together with musicians and their audience – with accessible AI, AR and Avatar technology and publishing content including best practices, opinions and experiences of experts by experience. Open Culture Tech is part of Innovationlabs, a program that gives an impulse to new resilience in the cultural and creative sector. The Creative Industries Fund NL, on behalf of all national cultural funds, and CLICKNL are implementing the program on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The Creative Industries Fund NL and CLICKNL issued the Open Call for Innovation Labs twice, in 2021 and 2022. This call was open to innovative and experimental projects to tackle current challenges in the cultural and creative sector and to increase the sector's resilience . Many makers, cultural institutions and other creative parties responded. Sixteen projects have been selected from all their ideas in the first edition and seventeen projects in the second edition. Together, the 33 initiatives represent more than 200 parties from diverse cultural and creative disciplines. Open Culture Tech is one of the seventeen projects selected in the second edition.