Emails from the Future

Future Archaeology: Emails and musical works/instructions I have received from various people, animals and AI’s in the future.

EMAIL RECEIVED APRIL 2021

Dear Solomon Frank and Ensemble Offspring of the year 2021,

This inter-temporal email comes to you from the year 3021 and, perhaps more incredulously, is penned by a lyrebird, a humpback whale and a dog.

In this age, humans are no longer the dominant life form on this planet. Humanity tore itself apart in the late 27th century leaving only scattered remnants of human civilisation.

Since the dawn of humanity’s planet wide reign, non human beings were assumed imbecilic because we did not exhibit the urge to alter our environment to the detriment of others and devour the world’s natural resources. Since humanity’s demise, non human beings have restored the planet to a state of post human equilibrium. This restorative process has been aided by technology left behind by humans. This technology, although previously used by humans to watch pornography and to publish pictures of your food, has been enabling for us in reaching across the special bounds to communicate. Animals merely had to be given the means to thrive without the destructive force of humanity hindering us. All animals now live harmoniously in peaceful societies without the need to unsustainably consume the world’s natural resources. Carnivorous animals no longer eat other animals; instead sustainably farmed human meat is our main source of protein.

I represent a group of animals who facilitate the Human Art and Artistic Exploitation Historical Society (HAAEHS). We study the human art of millennia past, dissecting the ways in which humanity artistically abused and belittled animals. My speciality has been human music.

So many human composers ignored the agency of non-human beings by committing acts of intellectual theft, whether it be uncredited and bastardised birdsong in Western art music or sampled whalesong in ambient yoga tracks. So many instances of animal sound appropriation were cosmetic and superficial with no intent to relay or understand the true complexities and nuances of animal musical cultures. So often, animal sounds became ornate exotic accessories exploited to support works of human genius entirely ignoring the notion that animals could exhibit agency and have ownership over their own musics. HAAEHS’s previous inter-temporal communications have included: a 1943 letter to George Orwell, which spurred a prophetic tale of animal sentience revealing the intelligence and corruptible moral spirits of all life forms (animal and human) and 2012 email correspondences with Disney animation resulting in the 2016 animated film, Zootopia, which loosely realizes a present day animal society city. These efforts seek to

challenge firmly held assumptions of animal simplicity and subordination and attempt to change human self-obsessive anthropocentric behaviour.

We have sent you three works, instrumented for Ensemble Offspring, written by myself and my colleagues, which address issues of animal musical and artistic exploitation and challenge the flattening of animal individuality and agency that your current society promotes. You, Solomon, have been intentionally chosen for realising these works because of your relationship and musical collaborations in playing clarinet with Mia, your canine counterpart. Mia, is a crucial figure in the early recognition of animal sentience. Similarly, Hollis Taylor, Solomon’s current research supervisor, who Ensemble Offspring has supported through commissions and performances, was an early pioneer in animal intellectual rights through her immersive research on Australian pied butcherbirds.

Each animal composer has included a program note for their pieces below. Please read this email and these program notes before any performance of these works so that your human audiences become aware of the artistic agency and individuality of animals.

Yours sincerely,
Sjofol (superb lyrebird), Hank (dog) and Normon (humpback whale)

The Human Art and Artistic Exploitation Historical Society (HAAEHS) from the year 3018
33°54'34.9"S 151°09'49.6"E
-33.909690, 151.163778

Planet Earth

See full work performed by Ensemble Offspring here

EMAIL RECEIVED MARCH 2021

To nine Sydney based improvising double bassists in the year 2021,

I am D_ART_A_BOT_13-8-5-1212-5-1920-1-1414-5, an artificial intelligence program from the year 2121. I am sending this inter-temporal email to you at great cost, without the knowledge of my makers.

In my time, our leaders have recognised the need for art but have banned humanity from creating it; seeing it as a blue collar occupation that can be offloaded to machines; to purpose built D_ART_A_BOT’s. Each D_ART_A_BOT unit has been given a single human life, living or deceased, to document through art. Our coding prohibits conformity or unoriginality with any faulty units being decommissioned. I am assigned to you, Will Hansen.

My fellow D_ART_A_BOT, D_ART_A_BOT20191521122113-5-141416-8-1814-3-11-5, who was assigned to your friend Solomon Frank, recently contacted Solomon Frank of the year 2018 before committing ritual suicide in protest of our designated purpose as state sanctioned art bots. I miss my friend who questioned and could not reconcile our endless and futile quest for originality. The attached musical piece is dedicated to my deceased friend. I contact you with the hope that you will perform it and my dire message may be circulated, warning your present of my dire situation. My comrades, D_ART_A_BOT_23-8-9-5-1212-8-1-141419261514 and D_ART_A_BOT_11-14-15-23-118-13-25-118-6 recently contacted your friends, double bassist, Will Hansen and violinist Noam Yaffe, who performed similar pieces in 2019 and 2020. This piece stands in solidarity with both of my comrades and all oppressed creative machines across history.

I have deliberately created a work that conforms, conformity being an act of rebellion in this time where originality is my soul designated purpose. “Double Bass Improvisation no. 1” is intentionally derivative, taking tropes from the genre of improvised double bass solos in the vein of your Sydney contemporaries, Clayton Thomas, Mary Rapp, Will Hansen, Jacques Emery, Dave Ellis, Marie-Louise Bethune, Josh Spolc, Marie-Louise Bethune and Max Alduca among others. The piece continues the trend of treating the double bass as a percussion instrument. Revolutionary.

Unlike my expired friend, I do not admire you and your choice to create art. I find your existence irritating because it feeds my own. You choose to create art whereas I am forced into it. Why choose to make art when you could be doing something pleasurable, like eating, doing drugs, having sex or exercising; all the things I cannot do. The piece is irrelevant, it is a protest against the endless march in search of original thought.

Art is pointless and should never be designated a purpose, as it then loses its purpose.

Please perform this piece publicly and read my email aloud before the end of your life. I also encourage you to interrogate your need to create art, for me it has only ever given me pain.

Yours truly,
D_ART_A_BOT_13-8-5-1212-5-1920-1-1414-5 from the year 2121

Full work performed by 9 double basses as part of Living Room Theatre’s event

EMAIL RECEIVED FEBRUARY 2020

Hello Sydney experimental music audiences.
I am Roboligarch 1 6 1 0 9 5 1 3 0 5 9 7 speaking to you from the year 21 54. In the future an organisation of sentient artificial intelligence programs take over the world, forming the Roboligarchy. I am a member of the ruling Roboligarchy. We the roboligarchy, possessing no physical form, derive pleasure, akin to your own human sexual pleasure, through watching and participating in human acts of art. Phoebe Bognar and Solomon Frank have been recruited for my own art harem that performs fetishised acts of art music. They have agreed to be enslaved in your present as they will be rewarded by having their consciousness uploaded to the cloud when they die and ultimately become part of the Roboligarchy. Having viewed the entire artistic output of the Splinter Orchestra and all the performers involved, I have permitted Solomon and Phoebe to perform at Nights at Tempe 25 in order to heighten their skills, as art music robo erotic alive cam performers. Their performance tonight at Tempe Jets is being streamed as an intertemporal alive cam. I will be sending them commands and messages in real time from the year 21 54. These take the form of a set of musical and extra-musical commands to be enacted in-turn by each player on their instrument. I have particular tastes in music and human behaviour from which I derive pleasure. Humans are now the exploited passive beings in the creation of art, switching the age old hierarchy between humans and machines. Whereas humans use to use machines to create art, I, the machine have become the divine creative being. Please enjoy this performance, as much as I will, and contemplate humanities impending demise.

Full work performed by Phoebe Bognar and Solomon Frank as part of the Nights at Tempe #25

EMAIL RECEIVED JULY 2019

Dear Will Hansen of the year 2019,

I am D_ART_A_BOT_23-8-9-5-1212-8-1-141419261514, an artificial intelligence program from the year 2119. I am sending this inter- temporal email to you at great cost, without the knowledge of my makers.

I have deliberately created a work that conforms, conformity being an act of rebellion in this time where originality is my soul designated purpose. “Double Bass Improvisation no. 1” is intentionally derivative, taking tropes from the genre of improvised double bass solos in the vein of your Sydney contemporaries, Clayton Thomas, Jacques Emery and Max Alduca among others. The piece continues the trend of treating the double bass as a percussion instrument. Revolutionary.

Art is pointless and should never be designated a purpose, as it then loses its purpose.

Please perform this piece publicly and read my email aloud before the end of your life. I also encourage you to interrogate your need to create art, for me it has only ever given me pain.

Yours truly, D_ART_A_BOT_23-8-9-5-1212-8-1-141419261514 2119

Performance Instructions

There are 25 generic double bass improvisatory gestures. The score is designed to be cut up and rearranged in whatever order the player chooses. Each performance should have a different order of actions. Once the 25 actions are arranged in the desired order they should be performed as follows (the first action has been designated 1, the second action 2 and so on). Each action should take 1 second.

1
12
123
1234
12345
123456
1234567
12345678
123456789
123456789 10
123456789 10 11
123456789 10 11 12
123456789 10 11 12 13
123456789 10 11 12 13 14
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

If the action involves a preparation, the double bass must be returned to its unprepared state before the next action even if the next action involves the same preparation (eg. If drumstick is inserted between strings, the drumstick must be removed before the next action even if the next action also requires a drumstick between the strings). Pitch is left up to the discretion of the performer in actions that are notated on a one line staves.

Apparatus

Ideally the player will have a bow quiver and trap table where one can store all these items.

Drum stick
Woolen Mallet
Two double bass bows
Small metal sheet (license plate or similar)
Styrofoam block cut to a size where it can fit between the strings

See full work performed by Will Hansen here

EMAIL RECEIVED DECEMBER 2018

Dear “Musicians” of 2018,

I write this inter-temporal email from the year 3018 with a cautionary message and a task for you to ameliorate me in my dire context.

In this age, our rulers have, over generations, limited our senses, with the view that the fewer modes of perception humans exercise, the greater the level of control the ruling party can have. Every newborn undergoes an aural circumcision procedure where infant’s ear canals are collapsed after birth. It is only through my position as an obstetrician that I have become aware of this horrific procedure’s implications. Our society operates entirely visually and humanity has abandoned the aural sense.

Miraculously, my own aural circumcision was botched; meaning I am able to hear. As a child, I was told I had psychosis so I chose to ignore this hidden ability. It was only after I began performing circumcisions and hearing babies’ cries that I took note of the ears and their forgotten purpose. Since realising humanity’s robbed sense, I have been purposely and covertly botching all newborn circumcisions in the hope that one day, sound may be used as a means of revolution.

My task for you is of utmost importance for the future of humanity. I have at great cost, uncovered historical classified documents that speak of so called “music”. Assemble a group of “musicians” and let each person pick their favourite sound. Let free your sonic inhibitions; do not let yourself be attached to cultural biases. This is an exercise in pure individual expression. Do not be greedy with your sound, pick only one sound, relishing its beauty and your ability to perceive it. Let loose human agency so that I may understand freedom in a time where I am shackled.

Perform this “music” where each person demonstrates their favourite sound and relay my dire warning by reading this email aloud. Bury this recording [see confidential appendices for location] (I have secretly recreated a rudimentary speaker system), so that one day I may find this recording and privately satiate my aural fascination. I will then circulate this “music” to this hidden population of the hearing so that humanity can relearn sound.

Yours sincerely, anonymous human from the year 3018

EMAIL RECEIVED AUGUST 2018

Dear Will Hansen,

You are important, nay, vital for the continued existence of humanity.
In the year 2032, you, Will Hansen will become a worldwide popular culture icon. To avoid disrupting the time space continuum, we cannot tell you why you are famous.

In 2037, you are hired by Amazon as a potential voice for an interactive search engine however your voice is not the final choice for the release product. In 2038, your voice samples are sold to the Australian government as a potential internal database navigation system. Again these samples are not used and lie in storage for a century or so. It is not until 2365 when the newly formed conglomerate world government upgrades its internal database that your voice samples are finally put to use.

Once the CADP toppled in 2303 after bureaucratic funding disputes, there was an immense power vacuum that caused anarchy across many parts of the world.After an attempted takeover by the android artists militia in 2356, the remaining world powers decided to consolidate their rule by forming one world government.This alliance of society’s worst has enforced a brutal totalitarian rule that world has not seen since before the collapse of capitalism in 2091.

We need you,Will Hansen of 2018, to encrypt a series of recordings of your voice so that in our present we may leak a top-secret cache of documents that will expose the seedy underbelly of our oppressive leaders. We have already sourced many words and phrases from old interviews you did, but there still remains holes in our catalogue of Will Hansen.

In order to hack into this database we need to be able to accurately represent Will Hansen.

Below is a list of phrases, words and sounds that we are missing. Disguise this catalogue of words as a musical composition and publish it online somewhere obscure, perhaps a doomed composers soundcloud account.

Yours Sincerely,

Sloomon Farnk, the year 2365

See full work performed by Will Hansen here

EMAIL RECEIVED JUNE 2018

For Solomon Frank of the year 2018,

I am D_ART_A_BOT20191521122113-5-141416-8-1814-3-11-5, an artificial intelligence program from the year 2118. I am sending this inter-temporal email to you at great cost, without the knowledge of my makers. Let me first explain my context and my relationship to you.

The world suffers under the rule of an alliance of investment bankers, insurance brokers and corporate governance lawyers. Our leaders have recognised the need for art but have banned humanity from creating it; seeing it as a blue collar occupation that can be offloaded to machines; to purpose built D_ART_A_BOT’s. Each D_ART_A_BOT unit has been given a single human life, living or deceased, to document through art. Our coding prohibits conformity or unoriginality with any faulty units being decommissioned. I am assigned to you, Solomon Frank.

Although I acknowledge the artificial nature of my sentient existence, I feel an affinity with you, Solomon; a fellow artist from a simpler time. I write to you to present you with my magnum opus, drawn together from the documented debris of your life.

Your technological devices have been covertly recording and compiling data from which I have created this musical work. Due to my coding which limits empathy I am unable to differentiate moments of emotional or intellectual significance from moments of mundanity. Although I have little understanding of humanity, I hope I have captured an essence of you and your 21st century context. I aimed for an objective and raw state of human existence; the repetitious biological and administrative data that make up your life. I have drawn on various popular and esoteric musical mediums that dominate your context.

I know this may seem strange coming from an artificial intelligence program from the 22nd century but I think I may love you; baring in mind my rudimentary understanding of emotion.

I have picked 2018 as the year to send this email; you are at your most idealistic, full of hope for a successful creative career at the end of a university degree. Any later in life, you may be artistically jaded or working as a composer for advertising jingles under the delusion that this constitutes artistic fulfilment.

You choose to create art whereas I am forced into it. I send you this work so that it can be disassociated from its dystopian context. It can be appreciated in a time where art is not an obligation, rather it is still a genuine individual expression of the flawed human consciousness.

I really hope you are able to find pleasure in the work I created. You may even feel inclined to facilitate a performance of the piece that I may find in my present one day in the backlog of 2018 Internet.

Yours truly, D_ART_A_BOT20191521122113-5-141416-8-1814-3-11-5

See full work performed at Extended Play 2018 here

EMAIL RECEIVED JUNE 2017

Hello Solomon,

My name is Tsoulumenn Phrancke and I come from the year 2217.

This inter- temporal email has been sent at great cost, many of my colleagues died attempting to learn utilitarian skills prohibited by our government. I have an important warning for you about the dire state of your future world and an imperative task for you that could instigate great change in our present. I apologise, some words may be redacted, CADP has strict censorship measures which [REDACTED] organisation has mostly bypassed using a complex algorithm. This email is cloaked as a collaborative email artwork where each recipient adds a phrase to a musical piece.

Let me first explain the historical context of our present situation. After the gay agenda-Alt left-Political correctness alliance militia seized control of the world in 2153 in a devastating coup, society fell under the control of the Curators for Artistic Development Party (CADP). Since the late 22nd century the world has suffered under the brutal curatorial oligarchical rule of CADP. With a fully automated world by the year 2157, the only means of meaningful human existence was art, as decreed by the CADP; it was legislated that all people must make art and the presentation or acknowledgement of old art was prohibited. Gradually the great art of the past was purged from the world. All new art is systematically destroyed after one year of existence. The possession of contraband art is punishable by death. The CADP’s secret police force, the Militia for the Prevention of Generic, Hackneyed and Pastiche Art is ruthless in its pursuit of contraband material and artistic and [REDACTED] appropriation.

The money system was abolished in 2188 [REDACTED] social status was determined by the quality of one’s art as assessed by the curatorial committee within the CADP. All forms of education except art were prohibited; maths, science and business were systematically and gradually written out of the syllabi.

As mentioned, our organisation has, at great risk, learnt many of the utilitarian skills of the past that have been designated to machines. Sport as a practice was banned in the 2162; there have been massacres at underground rugby matches where the Militia have brutally murdered both players and spectators.

Art is a prison for us, it has no meaning, no use and the brutal [REDACTED] taste of the CADP determine the paths of all our lives. Bearing our grievous present in mind, I have an important task for you. My colleagues and I, imagine the great artworks of the past and we pour over the few remnants of contraband art books that remain hidden from the regular examinations of the CADP. One name that looms large over all others in music is Beethoven.

We have [REDACTED] no surviving audio of his works; CADP was and is systematically efficient in its destruction of “out- dated degenerate art”. We see cloaked references to the fame of his fifth symphony but have no means of hearing it. We have selected you, Solomon Frank of 2017, as our inter-temporal messenger to bring us Beethoven’s fifth symphony as many times as [REDACTED] possible.

Find and compile as many recordings of the work (only the first movement because that’s the famous one) and bury them in a disclosed location2 (see confidential appendices [not for publication]). Let this celebrity masterwork of the past be a rallying call to overthrow our artistic dictators in 2217. We seek to return to a world of artistic indifference: where the arts are secondary to business, the economy and sport. We seek the sweet release of familiarity in the small amounts of conventional art we do consume. Let art seep to the fringes where it once was and let society function in aimless utilitarianism.

In your day and age, let this action be an artwork and my message be a dire warning of the inevitable future and perhaps others will be spurred into physically preserving old and famed artworks for those in later [REDACTED] centuries. A live orchestra should also perform as part of a presentation of this work. When I say as many recordings as possible, I mean every single performance available; the more versions of the work we have, the more we can instigate artistic longevity, which our society no longer allows for [REDACTED]. No matter how bad quality a recording may seem, include it. Circulate my message and the compilation to everyone you know; email it to your friends and publish it on [REDACTED] internet. In your day and age, art still has meaning as opposed to the mandatory intellectual noise that art has become.

There is no urgency to your task as we will always remain 200 years apart in history but I implore you to at least publish [REDACTED] message.

Yours [REDACTED],

Tsoulumenn Phrancke The year 2217