Words by w0rmw00d
Multicultural.
Transcontinental.
Suburbia.
Guitar.
Rebellious spirit.
Film-making.
Economics Degree.
Music Friends.
MUTEK.
Embracing the Unknown.
Fearless.
Pecas.
I feel like our lives are defined by discrete, singular moments that we can trace backwards all of the decisions we make. It’s borderline depressing to think of life this way, that your entire existence can be summarized by a handful of “bullet points” of moments in time. But I find this notion actually quite freeing, very humbling and extremely instructive.
I’m 30 years old and as I’ve aged, I realize that growing older isn’t the same thing as growing up. I’ve met kids and teenagers wise well beyond their years, almost sage-like or gurus. And I’ve met ‘adults’ who couldn’t be further removed from the meaning of that word. What I think makes or breaks a person in this regard, and by extension what helps define one’s life, are the “bullet points”.
There is a story to be told in data and there is a power in understanding that story. Once you do understand, you are armed with the knowledge of how to best act going forward. The choice is yours.
Pecas understands her story.
Pecas is using it to shape her future, to carve out her own path on her own terms.
Pecas doesn’t know where it will lead.
Pecas is cool with that.
ALL THE CONTEXT
My simple summary of Pecas’ ‘bullet points’ is grossly simplistic and only the tip of the iceberg. Born in Madrid and raised in upstate New York, Pecas grew up in Suburbia. Biding her time, it was very easy for boredom to set in. Her parents thought she could use some structure and gave her a guitar. She didn’t touch it for a year.
“I was just so Anti-anything my parents were telling me to do at the time. So I ended up not picking up that guitar until I finally had my own personal interest. That was my first experience with music as a teenager. But it came from being rebellious.”
An interest in film-making took hold but was shot down by her parents. Defaulting to something stable, Pecas earned her degree in Economics and even worked in economic consulting for a while. As any artist can attest however, leaving art completely behind is a hard path. Pecas decided to pivot and started working as a video editor in New York for documentaries as well as starting to dedicate herself more again to music and performance. She released her first EP in 2018 with then Brooklyn label Broken Circles and in 2021 moved to Mexico City to start recording a full-length album.. A discovery of MUTEK Mexico, an international music festival dedicated to the promotion of electronic music and the digital arts, changed the game completely.
“Once I discovered MUTEK, it was like, wow! That’s the thing; that’s what I want to do. I’m in a phase of transitioning from the more RnB/Neo-Soul stuff of my past to electronic and hardware stuff. That fusion will be interesting, I don’t know yet what it will look like.”
Context is key. How are you going to know what to do if you don’t know what you did? Or where you came from? “Bullet points” for the win.
CREATIVITY AS EXPERIMENTATION
Before we get back to Pecas, I want to say my piece on true art, or what I believe to be true art, and the proprietors of it. There are artists and then there are ARTISTS. The difference I think is in the context and motivation of the individual. We live in a time where anyone can create due to the proliferation of tech, of information, of resources. And yet, we’re still inundated with garbage, which is both alarming and fascinating.
I think true artists have a couple traits that really differentiate them from everyone else:
- They are intrinsically motivated to do their thing
- They are okay with the unknown
- They continue to strive to innovate
- They could care less about what the outside world has to say
Intrinsic Motivation:
I think the baseline for any type of creative is some intrinsic form of motivation. Earl Sweatshirt, one of the best poets of my generation, summarizes his creative process by first understanding why he wants to create. Only then does he move forward.
Knowing the WHY seems to be a key ingredient into the WHAT of it all. True artists seem to know their WHY and let it inform their WHAT.
The Unknown:
The world is a crazy place. Life is hard. Existence is absurd.
You are either ok with this fact or not. That’s just as a human, btw, not even as a creative.
I feel that true artists not only accept this fact, but revel in it, like a forcing function to create in the face of the unknown. Wynton Kelly, one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time who played in Miles Davis’ group during So Much Blue, had a seizure and passed away at 39. We lost Buddy Holly and Richie Valens, Aaliyah, Selena to tragedies…..the list goes on and on.
We are here today and gone tomorrow. You can’t run away from the unknown. True Artists embrace it.
Innovation:
I have a thought experiment for you all. Please, try this exercise.
Think of your top 5 favorite bands. Go through their discography, from first album to most recent. Really think about the context of each project, the dynamics, the time of the work, etc.
Now ask yourself: did that band really change or innovate over the years?
If you’re like me, you might be going through the 5 stages of grief right now as you realize that they probably didn’t. And it’s not just bands, it’s solo acts, filmmakers, painters, writers/authors, etc.
Let’s think of Innovation as a spectrum. On one end you have someone like Drake, who is a culture-vulture, who steals music, ideas, personas and more from other artists and who hires writers to create his lyrics. Fair to say he’s not very innovative.
On the other end, would be an artist that is the antithesis of Drake. Who creates from an intrinsic place, who constantly evolves, who actually does the bare minimum of writing their own rhymes. Wait a minute, where have I seen this before….
The point is that on this spectrum, you’ll have a lot of artists who are probably regressing towards the mean. And not too many artists on the other end of the spectrum.
And this is not to knock anyone. The point is that true innovation is fucking hard. But the real ones seem to actively choose this path, the road less traveled.
The Outside World:
The most straightforward and probably the hardest trait is not giving a shit about other people and what the world has to say about you or your art. We’re human; it’s biologically coded in us to be social creatures. A component of social creatures is acceptance and running in packs. Add the internet and social media to the equation and suffice it to say, it is really hard to not listen to the outside world.
Another component here is survival. Not everyone can survive off their art.
And yet true artists somehow find a way to make their art anyways.
How many stories are there of creatives reminiscing on their early struggles, only to keep going and somehow forging a path for themselves?
Madlib, the GOAT hip hop producer said so much cool shit in his life, but this quote really stands out to me:
“I’ve already been poor and it didn’t stop me from creating. I’d be doing this if I was the only man on the planet, because it’s my life and I love music. Once you find that thing you want to do, you’ll be amazed at how little you care about what people have to say about it. That’s when you get dope.”
Enough said.
—o—
I outlined my thoughts here because Pecas actually helped me crystallize them a bit. I’m always honored to meet artists through my work at Neutone, but Pecas was different in that she’s actually changing her style/musical approach and evolving in real-time. And she is emblematic of a true artist, like everyone we’ve had the pleasure of profiling, in the sense of embracing that metamorphosis, as scary as it is and will be.
Our conversation shifted towards AI and some of the work happening at Neutone. Pecas was extremely eager to jump in and really dive into the nitty gritty, which is always exciting! While I’m out of practice when it comes to ML research, I always enjoy a good conversation 🙂
What I found again was an individual looking for understanding. The beginnings of her passion rooted in MUTEK, have forged a new path and outlook on AI within the creative fields, one Pecas is ready to embrace.
“AI is just another tool that we can utilize. And it has the potential to become this really interesting tool to combine all these sounds and be able to explore textures within this sound latent space thing, right? And then you have this unique flavor of a combination of things that you could explore. And training models allows for artists to explore and offer their own datasets to the world, which is super fascinating. If we’re all sharing models, we create this balanced state of symbiosis. And yet, still it’s a unique combination of all these sounds that wouldn’t otherwise be generated. It’s like AI gives you the ability to combine things and create a new hybrid state.”
I think this sentiment really captures the essence of audio models and the future market/viability of them; if the goal is to empower artists with AI instead of taking advantage of them and leaving them out of the conversation, we need to be transparent and open around the sharing of these models for creative exploration and expression. Only then can we all benefit equally from their existence.
As I wrapped up our time together, I had all sorts of feelings. Not wanting the call to end, a feeling of a potential new friend, and excitement for what the future has in store. Pecas is here to stay. Pay attention or you might miss out.
—o—
Pecas has new projects in the works. We are excited to be collaborating with her on a custom audio model, which will be released early 2025. You can follow along with everything going on below: