Before I start my rants, I just want to bring your attention to three things. Jump ahead if you’ve already seen this stuff.

1 – The Philly Pedal Party

Details as below, there will be a bunch of cool stuff to try, the builders will be there for chats and questions and you can buy stuff direct! Always a good time.

2 – The Skitter V3

I’m taking preorders for the first batch of the Skitter with limited edition art. Plenty more and the regular art version coming soon. Lead time is currently 4 to 6 weeks.

3 – Relic Music Tunnel of Reverb Raffle

As I’m sure many of you have already heard, Simon Small (Tunnel of Reverb) passed away in a tragic car accident recently. He was a key part of the community. Simon’s wife Sarah survived but is currently facing a challenging new chapter of life without Simon and under the heavy financial burden.

Relic Music has organised a raffle to help raise funds. It’s $10 a ticket, there is no limit on how many tickets anyone can buy. All money will go to Sarah to help cover medical bills and funeral expenses.

You can click on the photo or the link below to join the good cause. There is so much cool stuff in there.

https://shop.relicmusicshop.com/shop/c/p/Tunnel-of-Reverb-Raffle-Ticket-x99884419.htm

If you weren’t aware of Simon’s demos, please check out his channel here.

Thank you for your attention in these three things.

Now on to the rambling, feel free to leave and do something better or to carry on and read whatever this turns out to be.

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The future is grim, is it not?

Unless it isn’t. And maybe we get a say in some of it.

Last summer I managed to get off autopilot and started to reassess my small place in the current and coming mess. I covered a lot of this in the last article. But here’s a bit more of what I’ve been. thinking about.

For a few years it’s felt like we’ve been stumbling our way into oblivion trying to second guess the eternally unknowable algorithm. And now there’s the heavy-handed and way-too-early rollout of everything is AI now! situation to contend with. To me it seems like an unnecessary complication of simple tools that worked before.

And of course we’ve seen this in some form for decades with technology pushed by the engine of capitalism. Now, economics and the like isn’t something I know a lot about, but this time it feels a bit more intrusive and with potentially wider reaching and weightier consequences. I wonder how many livelihoods will be impacted and jobs replaced by AI in the coming years.

I could be totally wrong, it could turn out any number of ways and it would be disingenuous of me to claim to know otherwise. I’m not here to fear monger. What I really want to do is take the ‘future technology’ discussion down the more specific path towards the field of art and creativity as I hinted at in the overly dramatic title.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want AI thinking for me, and I don’t want AI “creating” art for me. Those joys are hard earned and those hard earned joys are inherently human. They take a lifetime of effort and show a lifetime of lived experience. Contemplation, experimentation, emotion and inspiration are experiences that are needed for artistic pursuits, they can’t be synthesised and can’t be replaced with shortcuts. Personally, I’d rather fail, learn and develop on my own terms.

Before diving too far into a hypothetical dystopia, I’d rather focus on the actual present, and what part I play in a world that is increasingly taken with ready-baked answers and passively absorbing identity through memes that hide divisive ideas. I think it’s worth the time thinking about and writing about.

There’s no problem in using whatever tools are available to you, I’m sure AI has been implemented in some fantastic ways already and could be revolutionary in the coming years. I just worry that the value we place in “human” authenticity will take too much of a back seat, at least temporarily. I feel that what we earn through consideration, challenging perspectives and the skills we’ve worked on over the years is irreplaceable, even if it’s not perfect. Our imperfections are undeniably human and I think always worth our time and effort.

I mean, I have the same spotty information you do, so I don’t have any real insight into the future, but I do think it’s a sound idea to invest in yourself and the things that make you who you are regardless of what may or may not be coming. There’s value in our uniqueness.

I want to focus on fostering art and creativity and I want to focus on community and bringing people together in whatever small ways I can. I think it always pays dividends in the future regardless of whatever else is going on.

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Re-evaluating the tools

I’m sick (as are you hopefully) of being fed plastic content, incomplete thoughts in bite sized snippets, rage bait and misinformation for clicks and advertising poorly disguised as memes.

Where’s the ingenuity? Logically I know it’s still out there but it’s getting drowned out or commoditised. This has always been the way, but with the sheer volume of what’s being put out now, plus the bots, it’s getting ridiculous.

I wonder if we’ll end up moving back to aggregators and hubs of shared experience and expertise like in the old days of dedicated TV and radio shows and magazines and of course strong communities. An “if you liked that, you’ll love this” but with actual people. I know that many of these things still exist in many places. I don’t think they went totally extinct, but I do think it’s something worth returning to on a larger scale.

Algorithms consolidate around existing trends, and pull in more views to what’s already popular. The problem is a lot of what’s already popular is bland, inoffensive and often backed by a big budget. It feels very often like we are just getting hit over the head with the same stuff over and over.

It’s not physically (or mentally) possible for us to process everything in our feeds. It’s too much, it’s over stimulating and that’s by design. On top of that, shorter form content is prevailing, and the powers that be seem to be perfecting and weaponising the science of successive quick fire dopamine hits. It’s a machine gun.

Social media feeds lack real world context and they transfix us with the dopamachine gun, so we get the reward chemical but it’s not rewarding. It’s isolating. It makes your world smaller, less challenging and offers a false sense of safety. It’s pacifying rather than inspiring, and it’s very, very addictive.

Creativity needs the real life context of time and space for ideas to develop. The bombardment of a social media feed can leave us with a feeling that we have been creating when really we’ve just been consuming. It’s nothing, it’s a ghost.

Before I go on, I think it’s important to say, if you have that feeling like you should get off social media, then do it. Even if it’s short term, it can have a big impact on your quality of life. Moderation is great, but sometimes a break is what’s needed.

I’d rather not be part of the dopamine beast that steals hours of your life and makes money for other people. Now, I realise I can’t run Champion Leccy and totally leave social media behind, but I am trying to fight the battle for less and better. I need to reach people to have a business, and I’m hoping to do that in healthier ways.

Firstly, I have a mailing list for people who want to sign up. I like these slomo ‘opt in’ ways of communicating with people. The newsletter is about once a month and includes info about new stuff, events and articles and the like. I’m planning on writing more articles like these sharing thoughts, projects and what-have-you for those who are interested.

There’s also a discord for people who want to chat and share stuff. It’s open to all. It’s not a Champion Leccy owners club, everyone is welcome and it’s free. It’s a place where we hold a music project a couple of times a year where you have the opportunity to write and record with strangers of all levels and abilities. It’s a good group of lads and lasses.

As for Instagram, Youtube and the like, I was recently reminded that your entire online presence could be an art project if you wanted. You don’t have to follow any formats or anything, you can be totally free to participate on your own terms, and that’s what I plan to do. Second guessing be damned. I miss doing daft videos.

Outside of future daftness, one thing that’s definitely in the plan for later this year is more informative, to the point stuff like video manuals, examples of suggested settings and etc. The wheels are moving on these but I haven’t started filming anything yet. Building stock is the priority and the good news is I’ve been making progress there, so everything in due course.

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Community

Before I sign off, I just want to add this last little bit.

Simon’s (Tunnel of Reverb) passing hit me because he was a mate, but the hole it left in the community was by far and a way more noticeable. It’s testament to how fantastic a person he was, and the way the community shared that grief struck me for a couple of reasons.

Firstly I realised that in taking time away from the business over the last couple of years, I’d also unintentionally retreated from the community and somewhat isolated myself. It wasn’t intentional, but looking back it’s been a detriment to my mental health and it has left me feeling like I’ve been letting the side down. It’s something I actively want to correct.

I also realised that this is the first time I’ve ever been part of a community and it highlighted how rare and special that is. There’s a lot of wonderful and talented people I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with since I started Champion Leccy when I came to America 10 years ago. It’s a precious thing that is worth investing in.

When I talk about the community, of course I’m talking about other builders, demo folks and retailers who make all of this possible, but I’m also talking about you. All of the creators, musicians, artists out there, regardless of how old you are or how good you are at your instrument. If you consider yourself a bit of a weirdo, someone who enjoys art and music and want to be part of the community, then you’re in. You’ll find no gatekeeping here, unless you’re a jerk. No jerks thanks.

As ever, thank you for reading this far. If you have any thoughts you want to share, you can comment, email me, hit me up on instagram or on the discord.

All the very best and happy humaning!