“Silos”: a Masterpiece of Love, Loss and Dystopia Rolled into 57 Minutes
Music has always been a medium of personal expression in a world dominated by presenting a false perception of yourself online. You can tell a lot about a person by who their favourite band, song or artist is.
Perhaps it’s recency bias in saying this. Maybe I’m blinded by my personal taste in music. But Columbus hard rock band Starset are the only band to ever capture raw emotion, unique thought and commentary of our failings between the covers of a single album. Their schtick has been based around spreading ‘The Message’ ever since they released ‘My Demons’ in 2013 - a fictional transmission from the year 2050 warning of Earth’s demise from greedy corporations, totalitarian government and our own questionless subjugation in a never ending quest to make our lives easier.
If that doesn’t scream Dystopia then please redefine the word for me.
Their albums to date - Transmissions, Vessels, Divisions, and Horizons - have also touched on human emotion related to love, loss, joy and pain as a reminder that emotion is a gift and it simply cannot be replaced by machine. Our reliance on technology is much more worrying than just replacing the old ways. It’s shifting our attitude towards basic human emotion.
Their newest album Silos presents this better than any collection of music I’ve heard otherwise. Many tracks from the album are relational to the Dystopia project and I’m keen to do a deeper dive into this to help progress my practice in a way that makes me consider what I’m photographing and its weighted significance.
praesens
Not so much of a song but closer to an instrumental, praesens is the Latin word meaning present. This word can have several meanings - it could mean being physically present in an environment/location and it could also be used as a meaning of time measurement as in the present day.
In relation to the visualiser, I think it’s the latter. The fact that the visualisation is being depicted on a modern tablet is a warning that we are gradually letting technology take over. And who are the tablets of today made by? The big corporations - Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, etc.
As for the animation itself, it leans into the idea of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil being destroyed. This could be linked to the story of Adam and Eve, how they were advised not to eat the fruit from the tree in the bible and yet defied God by doing so anyway. It’s a commentary on our temptation as a species to constantly pursue knowledge by any means necessary, even if it destroys our souls in the process.
It shows the character becoming evil after eating the fruit and destroying the tree to create an ‘Everything Machine’. Such a device is described in ‘The Prox Transmissions’ - it prints anything the user wishes it to do, thereby eliminating the need for consumerism and construction. This might be considered a good thing but in reality it takes away jobs and can be used negatively by the people who have access to it. It isn’t the machine that’s the problem - it’s the people who have created it, the people who use it and what they use it for, evidenced by the oil pouring out of it at the end of the animation.
This type of machine is how our concept of Dystopias are born. The power becomes centralised by people who can easily be corrupted by things such as knowledge, technological advancement and the power itself that they hold leading to a collapse of the world we know. What’s seen as progression feeds regression and, despite not having any lyrics, the visualiser combines with the cinematic music to present fear in a subtle way.
DEGENERATE
My word is there a lot to unpack with this song. When it first dropped it caused a massive amount of controversy, dividing factions of the band’s fans. If they were a household name this song would be under severely intense scrutiny due to its AI usage. It’s a massive subject amongst creatives and they took a massive risk with the visualiser.
However, I think they’ve pulled it off. Just.
Before talking about the visualiser though, I’m keen to break down the title of the track. They pronounce the song ‘De-Generate’ which is a nod towards generative AI and how we might need to disconnect from our growing reliance on Artificial Intelligence before it takes over altogether. The interesting part is the spelling is actually ‘Degenerate’, meaning to decline physically or mentally. In relation to the lyrics describing ‘artificial pain’ and ‘a nice doomsday’, it serves as a warning once again about replacing real emotion with constructed feelings. This can make the human race disassociate ourselves with what makes us human, making us feel nothing and unable to make decisions logically. AI has been depicted as doing what it feels is for the greater good but it fails to understand the ramifications of that on an emotional level at times - positives and negatives.
This leads me nicely onto the visualiser. The primary issue people have with it is of course the use of AI as many are concerned about the jobs creatives missed out on in its creation. This has led Starset to come out and confirm that they paid artists to create the data set that the AI used for the video. In the UK, most creatives have to opt out on platforms such as LinkedIn and Instagram for their images being used to train AI software and artist rights are becoming an increasing issue for this - if AI is to co-exist alongside us for this kind of purpose, is this the best way forward rather than taking art without people’s permission?
There were other concerns raised regarding the environmental impact such a video has. The concern stems from significant energy and water consumption by AI data centres contributing to carbon emissions and straining power grids, especially from fossil fuels. These sorts of concerns are addressed in the video by junk and the destruction of the ocean as animals look on helplessly - but some argue that the irony the music video was going for hasn’t quite hit the mark.
Then there’s the narrative content of the visualiser. It mainly shows historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Cleopatra overindulging in any one of the 7 deadly sins as the world around them slowly deteriorates into a vast mountain of garbage. The primary point the band is trying to make is that you’re not meant to like the visuals of the video because the point of the song is warning about the sloppiness of AI in its current form. A professional creative team could have easily pulled off a more aesthetically pleasing music video but using AI to emphasise this is the entire point. It’s a form of satire to mock the very thing they’re using and, despite the issues and concerns associated with this, I think they only just get it right.
DARK THINGS
This is by far the most accurate depiction of Dystopia on the album. It’s a love story in a world that doesn’t allow love but, interestingly, allows the antagonist to be victorious. Much of the time, dystopian literature is intended to be dark and depressing to a point that the any kind of resistance is crushed. This is different though and I find it to be the most intriguing, relevant association from the album to my project.
The lyrics feel to me like they’re aimed at a toxic lover. Whether that’s a narcissistic ex, an unrequited love or something completely different, the narrator is obsessed with this person to a point where they fail to recognise the flaws and what they’re turning into. It’s very much like a dystopia - you get comfortable with control and peaceful with the idea of subjugation to the point where you don’t care about the horrible reality of the situation you find yourself in. It’s just easier to bow to the darkness and learn to love what’s happening to you.
The man in the music video doesn’t conform with this though. It paints a picture of workers slaving in a factory every day, transfixed occasionally by the image of a tree on a screen. The tree represent knowledge and, similarly to praesens, the fact it’s broadcast on a screen tells us how addicted we are to knowledge and discovering new things (or dark things). This is further evidenced when people are shown to be literally melting upon looking at their screens. The crowd also descends into absolute chaos when the main character destroys the screen, freeing them from knowledge and the digital world. Today’s world is happy to spend their time in front of screens - even as I type this entry into the journal I have been staring at my screen for two hours and the irony of watching people melt away from watching their screens whilst we watch them doing it on screens of our own isn’t lost.
What is the solution to this? The song fails to identify this due to the pandemonium of the crowd from losing the knowledge they seek so badly. It does however show us that togetherness and confiding in someone can provide solace from the pain you might be feeling. The man finds love in the end from a woman who also failed to see the appeal in seeking knowledge. It turns out seeking human connection was more important to both of them but in terms of my project, it’s heavily implied that nobody remains. There are no human subjects in my work. So what is the wanderer meant to do in this scenario?
