The Distance Between Two Ciphers
Daft Punk and the human factor
This Essay begins with a question: Will everything be automated in the not-so-distant future?, a question that I asked a friend, a machine learning specialist in a yard at the end of March. A question that was answered with a mysterious “I’ll send you a link, then we can talk”. That link was the seminar El factor humano en la ciencia de datos / Human factor and Data Science, by Pablo Duboue in FAMAF* . I won’t lie to you, it’s very specific and technical, so I watched it in fragments and I kept some parts that resonated with me. This Essay continues with another question: Did these fragments lead me to the robots or was it the other way around?
At the end of February of 2021, the French duet Daft Punk published their Epilogue and they chose to tell us with the secrecy that they used to appear. Why don’t they did it at a gig on a rooftop or starting a trip in an interstellar ship? none of that, only the silent fragment of Electroma that rewrites the end of that 2006 movie. What happened between Electroma, their last record Random Access Memories and this epilogue? Just an inverted journey, the end of an adventure, holding their last performance as wide as possible.
My RAM experience was unusual, the two singles found me without internet, cellphone, and listening to other’s radios with a secret hope: that the broadcaster said the magic words We´ve just listened to…but that didn´t happen. I knew that those tracks were Daft Punk´s when I saw the front page of Inrockuptibles Argentinian edition of June 2013. Why I didn´t recognize them? They said at the interview: Electronic music is everywhere (…) in a format that reminds us of our fifteen o ten years’ ideas: make a difference was a fundament. I was not -I´m not- an electronic music fan, but Daft Punk was never indifferent to me. Especially at the end of the 90´ and the early 00´ their videos Around The World and the infinite dance in that artisanal scenography, Da Funk and the dog with his leg in a cast walking in New York with a stereo and, at last, One More Time with the intergalactic cartoon band that generated a magnetic attraction. Then I watch Interstella 5555 a discovery science fiction musical. All those audiovisual accessories kept you glued to the screen. But in RAM another story happened, it took you off the screen. What was in that vibrant random access? a rhythm from another planet or so it seemed, but no: it was a resonance that activated a fiber in the memory of four decades of music.
Along with the second single, there was an anonymous video (I suspect that anonymity) that mash-up the second cut Lose Yourself To Dance with the broadcast of The Soul Train where Stevie Wonder plays Superstition: the same pulse that opens the 70’s, the same pulse in which Stevie begins to play all the instruments in his records to — as Jonathan Lethem says — overcome all paradoxes bringing the music into full accord, achieving the most human funk-pop ever recorded. All that overwhelming amount of references for them to begin to close their adventure with the last live performance, with Stevie Wonder on stage, at the 2014 Grammys, and ending their performance by playing a fragment of Another Star from the wonderful double album Songs In The Key Of Life.
How many decades of music, dance, and bodies in just six minutes? Pulse — Get Lucky — Pulse — Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger — Pulse — Le Freak — Pulse — One More Time — Pulse — Another Star. Heartbeats that cross three decades and close the last millennium, the first of the new and go trough the earth like a cosmic ray following its journey in space.
Let’s go back to the epilogue. His partner explodes, and Guy-Manuel walks towards infinity accompanied by a choir that repeats the chorus of Touch like a mantra, it sounds: Hold on, if love is the answer / You hold. After 15 years they rewrite the ending of Electroma and the golden robot no longer ends up burning like Bonzo, but leans on the landscape and a children´s choir. On their way to the multiple, robots encounter a sensitivity that goes through as many predicates as possible; making of that past influences something that does not wander erratically, but resists in a loving way of doing with waiting. Isn´t the musical pulse, the distance, the silence between one beat and the one that follows it? In that journey, in that cut, there is waiting as a way to do something new. Something with no name yet: pure chance. The end is just the beginning, like the legend of the Phoenix, and what keeps the world turning is the momentum of the beginning. The Epilogue finishes with the hands of each robot and a date, In the manner of an epitaph? It seems to say that our hands know nothing / from the other shore.
Two things from the Duboue seminar that led me to this exercise. On the one hand, the title, the decision, and the emphasis on locating the human factor. What does Duboue detect that leads him to that statement? Is it obvious that it is being neglected and necessary to emphasize it? Is the title of the seminar Auguste Dupin’s stolen letter? There is a boldness there that seems to reveal something. The other point I stopped at, was almost halfway when he quotes a Dylan Thomas verse Do not go gently into that good night. A warning, a pause, a cut, and an association to ask questions. In that verse resides the nucleus, that I take out of context and try to take it beyond-the-technique in a kind of synthesis: Let’s (not) be too human.
On the same day that the robots left for eternity and returned to space, a video was circulated that breaks down the sample of One More Time, the song that opened the new millennium. (click here 👆)
How many useless hours? How many takes discarded? Is it something that can be measured or are we marveling at the mystery? If you watch the video you can see three segments or, better yet, three distances to jump, circle, and skip. If we number them, the rhythmic sequence would be something like this: 2–2–2 // 1 // 2–2–2 // 1 // 2–2–2 // 1 // 3–3–3–3–3–3–3 // 1. (1= 𝅗𝅥, 2= 𝅘𝅥 y 3=𝅘𝅥𝅯.)
In the waiting, we found the cut and the journey and that distance seems to become a presence in the (in)decisive carelessness. Two pauses, the same pulse: the title and the verse that seem to share the path of the French duet. A time (a space) that cuts the erratic becoming to listen, look, touch, and decide in another way. It will be the possibility of naming, it will be the ability to modify a point of view, and it will be the obstinacy to find that moment that makes the erratic automatism tremble. In that singularity it will be — I want to believe — the human factor. Embracing distance as one of the ways of recognizing the impossible for something new to emerge, as in many disciplines and trades: the space between the beginning and the end of a story, between rhythm and meaning in a poem, between sender and receiver in communication, between 0 and 1, between the particular and the general. Two figures to count, unite, reel, and -why not- hide: the silence is there.
The robots returns differently, sampling their own riffs: With an analog synthesizer, even the temperature of the room influences the sound. All those parasites, those external factors, created a certain environment in which the electronics sounded very vivid. Letting the earth do its thing and give their acts a purpose by playing -for the last time- four decades of music in six minutes, making everyone dance. A closing that has a name: Get Lucky/Another Star. They also seem to say that waiting is useless, like this sample that began with a question in a courtyard, followed by a link, a title, and a quote from Dylan Thomas. He knew and warned us again: Do not go gently into that good night. The robots complement each other and in their adventure, they tell us not to cover that distance, even if it is the smallest between one pulse and another, between one note and the one that follows; because that would only become an infinite and mute space. After the night there is a sunrise and, if we are lucky, we will find another star, to which we will also give a name.
This is a translation (or the intent of a translation) of the original Spanish version, also published in Medium. You can read it here.
Did you like the essay? you can share it, applaud it and debate it. All these options while you listen to the playlist with all the songs mentioned + a bonus track.
*The Physics, Maths and Astronomy department of the National University of Córdoba.
*The quotes from Thomas Bangalter y Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo correspond to the magazine Los Inrockuptibles #181 — Argentinian Edition — June 2013
*Images: Daft Punk by tnssofres and Daft Punk#24 by bloglounge2007
Some extra links:
