Duran Duran’s latest single may be titled “Invisible,” but its visual accompaniment is anything but.
The English new wave band is once again on the leading front of musical innovation. The group known for its emphasis on “sonic architecture” (per keyboardist and singer Nick Rhodes) and embrace of new technology has released a dreamy music video created entirely by an artistic algorithm called Huxley.
Rhodes and his bandmates were interviewed about the project by Black Book’s Ken Scrudato, who writes that the Duran Duran video “is a three-minute-twenty-six-second hypnotic wonderland, whose imagery recalls the work of such perception-altering artists as Yves Tanguy and Odilon Redon.”
Huxley is a creative AI technology from the interdisciplinary team at Nested Minds, which describes the project as “an AI artist who takes concepts rooted in human language and translates them into provocative and daring imagery redefining the boundaries of imagination.”
Scrudato explains that the technology is named for prolific author Aldous Huxley and is based upon the principle of “active inference” pioneered by neuroscientist Karl Friston about a decade ago.
READ MORE: “Invisible” video draws on “the lyrical content and emotional tenor” of the song (Black Book)
“I think we’ve always viewed technology as something that we can use that can really help us. We’re not intimidated by it,” Durran Durran singer Simon Le Bon told ITV’s Nina Nannar.
We’ve always viewed technology as something that we can use that can really help us.
Simon Le Bon, Duran Duran
Huxley is modeled after the structure of the human brain, but it does not think the same way a person would.
Nested Minds entered footage of Duran Duran bandmates signing “Invisible,” shared the lyrics, music, some photos, and other information about the band to prompt Huxley’s process. But according to Le Bon, Huxley essentially “dreamt the video completely without any other sort of editing or guidance from his handlers.” That description certainly makes sense when you watch the spectral and somnolent images morph along with the AI’s free association.
In the same interview, drummer Roger Taylor said Huxley “came out with these incredible kind of ghostly images which kind of blew me away.” Rhodes describes the end product as “quite surreal and abstract in many ways as a lot of great art has been.”
READ MORE: Duran Duran’s latest music video was made without human hands (iTV)
Watch the video here and tell us what you think in the comments below.
“Invisible” is from Future Past, Duran Duran’s first album in six years, which is slated for release October 22.
Additionally, Spill Track notes “’Invisible’ is the first collaboration of its kind, between artists in different planes of existence.”
The article also reports the band is also collaborating on a new way to listen to “Invisible” via “360 Reality Audio, a new immersive music experience using Sony’s spatial sound technologies.” It’s slated to be the first of 360 such mixes of Future Past and 360 mixes from Duran Duran’s older hits, all of which will be available to stream on Amazon Music HD, TIDAL HiFi, and Deezer HiFi.