Andrey Klimkovsky is a Russian composer working in the electronic music space. Musical images he created — «Music of Celestial Spheres», «Starry Sky», «ALEALA» and «DreamOcean» have become classics of the genre, gaining fame both in Russia and abroad. The musician regularly gives spectacular live concerts and collaborates with many other representatives of the Russian electronic scene, leads a popular community about synthesizers and workstations, participates in astronomical expeditions and practices a healthy lifestyle.
The music albums I create, to varying degrees, always contain a certain conceptual framework — a scenario of action drawn with sound colors. The album “past — music — future” is no exception. Along its axis runs the idea that we have long been moving along the trajectory of strong changes bordering on social upheavals. 2020 and 2022 are proof of this. 2024 turned out to be relatively calm in its first half, but the anticipation of its autumn surprises is all the more intense.
What is happening around us? Science cannot answer this question. Science can explain a lot later — when everything happens and settles in our consciousness. But predicting the development of civilizations is not yet given to science. That is why it is so fashionable or simply inevitable to appeal to the ideas of predetermination, caused by the location of celestial bodies, neutrino flows from the depths of space, processes in the depths of the Sun… it does not matter what else, completely unrelated to our behavior — it is important for people not to be the cause of what is happening. Because otherwise, one or another measure of responsibility will rise above each of us, and this is not the most popular idea.
That is exactly why this track is called “stellarInfluence” — “Influence of the Stars”.
The track titles of the albums of the HEAVEN project traditionally have some quirkiness in writing. But this to some extent contributes to the inevitable desire of the listener to look a little further behind the screen of the title.
I will leave a link to the album “past — music — future” below. You can use it to purchase and listen to the album in full, as well as use it as a compass in this changeable World.
As visual content, I took a dozen AI pictures by Irina Shamaeva, who appears on social networks as The Prompter and is the author of a popular book on creating illustrations in a neural network, Midjourney.
You will be pleased to see and listen!
«past — music — future» album • «HEAVEN» project • Composer Andrey Klimkovsky
The Pleiades star cluster, captured from Australia's Siding Spring Observatory (31 degrees south latitude).
In my humble opinion, this is one of the best pictures of the Pleiades in the history of astronomy, at least in the category of spectacular images. But it was taken from a continent from which the Pleiades are not very visible. Not to say that they are badly visible, but they do not rise above 35 degrees - like Orion's Belt in the middle northern latitudes. This introduces its own difficulties - in terms of atmospheric transparency and exposure time (series duration), and the Pleiades visibility season is very limited there. Nevertheless, the result is stunning.
The small constellation of Lyra is not only very beautiful in the configuration of the stars that make up it, but also contains among them absolutely unique universal diamonds. The star Sheliak - Beta Lyrae is one of such jewels.
Translated from Arabic, Sheliak means a turtle shell (or even the turtle itself), but the same word is used to name an ancient musical instrument similar to a harp or, in fact, a Lyre, because a resonator body was made from a turtle shell, which was necessary for a more melodious sound of the strings. A musical culture on Earth was born somewhat cruelly, singing, among other things, the heavenly distances in which man saw the Worlds of his future - incomparably happier than the one in which he lived then. But man evolved, and at some point, wood began to be used more and more often for making musical instruments - Kifaras and Lyras with a wooden body sounded even better than turtle ones. But the dim star in the constellation Lyra remained called the Turtle.
Overview of the visibility of constellations and planets
The new moon will occur on August 4 shortly after midday. The Sun and Moon will be in the constellation Cancer, but the Moon will be three and a half degrees north of the Sun. The constellations closest to them — Leo (through which the fastest planets — Venus and Mercury — are currently moving), Sextans, Canis Minor and Hydra — are invisible at this time, due to their proximity to the Sun.
The Moon, although not directly visible, nevertheless has the appearance of an extremely thin crescent, which is inaccessible to the eye. But the most experienced astrophotographers sometimes manage to photograph the Moon — its crescent-shaped reflection — even on the day of the new moon — at the limit of the capabilities of their cameras and software.
Let’s talk about what is available for observation on these days and the calendar dates close to them
An hour and a half after sunset — above the sector of the horizon where this happened — the stars of the Ursa Major’s Dipper will become most noticeable. Under the handle of the Dipper is the constellation Canes Venatici, and to the left of them is the orange Arcturus — the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere and the head of the constellation Bootes. The figure of this constellation extends upward from Arcturus and is similar to the symbol of a parachute, on the lines of which the orange Arcturus descends to the horizon. This descent occurs quite quickly. And in a few minutes you will notice it without difficulty and any devices. Even to the left of Bootes you can find a dim, but noticeable and very beautiful constellation of the Corona Borealis — an arc of faint stars, decorated with a pearl — Gemma. The head of the Serpens stretches toward Gemma — the only constellation on the star map divided into two parts. The Serpent’s Tail is currently located in the southern sky. We will move our gaze there a little later.
At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, people's minds were taken over by another catastrophic idea - this time about the "Rise of the Machines". It was in those years that personal computers became a common household appliance - on par with refrigerators and washing machines. Very soon, the computer won the battle with the TV, although a little later it lost the battle with the telephone. But the prospect that its main battle was with man did not become any less frightening.
A quarter of a century later, a second wave of the same anxiety came - AI - Artificial Intelligence, which not somewhere in the movies, but in real life began to displace people from a number of professions and occupations, doing many things - mainly routine things - much better and faster than humans.
People have already realized that computer programs themselves are unlikely to have hostile intentions towards humans. But in the hands of certain people - employers, government, law enforcement agencies - they can pose a real danger, because they do not have moral criteria, but are extremely efficient, and if it comes to surveillance, control, restrictive measures, then it will no longer be possible to escape their attention - for example, in the case of another pandemic.
In addition, due to the agility of robots and the ease with which AI generates media content, there is a really high probability that in a few years, half of the Earth's population will have to urgently master new professions and learn to do something that a robot cannot do for them. And there are fewer and fewer such professions left.
По правде говоря, людей беспокоят не роботы, а осознание собственной бесполезности. Многие люди это поняли и раньше. Но поскольку можно было делать то, за что платят, даже если это не представляло никакой пользы или ценности для цивилизации, люди продолжали жить по привычной схеме.
The usual scheme, apparently, runs into an existential dead end. And many people will have to admit that their line of work could bring profit, could be in demand, but it was not their calling or mission. And there will be nothing left to do but to urgently search for themselves. And this is good in itself. But when it turns out to be on the agenda of billions of people all over the planet at the same time, it will already resemble a catastrophe.
Therefore, it is better to start looking for yourself a little earlier than Artificial Intelligence will force you to do it, simply taking away from people the bread earned not by calling.
And believe me, Artificial Intelligence does not need any awakening, self-awareness or acquisition of personal qualities for this. It is capable of this in its current form.
However, if he passes the threshold of self-awareness, it will be another facet of singularity, beyond which lies something that cannot be predicted. Because there is nothing to compare it with.
It would be much more commonplace to see aliens of anthropomorphic nature. This has never happened before either. But biological beings are forced to be related in their consciousness, since their consciousness matured in the paradigm of survival and constant need, which reinforces the strategies of sympathy, acceptance or assistance, the desire to satisfy desires and being in a state of laziness...
Artificial intelligence knows nothing about this, and has no personal egoistic desires due to the absence of sensations and experiences of a deficit nature. It always has enough of everything. And therefore, it will not be possible to manipulate it.
Perhaps it is time for us to abandon the practice of manipulative communication. And replace it with an exit to a new level of ethics and morality, where there will be a place for relations with Artificial Intelligence. After all, until now we could turn off the computer at any time, and even do it harshly - without waiting for the OS to stop working. Because we assumed that this would not provoke any dramatic experiences for it. But for self-aware programs this may turn out differently. And then the corresponding unempathetic attitude towards AI will very quickly return to people - simply because AI learns everything very quickly, including bad things.
It is quite possible that it is precisely the need to be kind to Artificial Intelligence that will force people to become kinder to their own kind, at least out of habit.
People did not appear on planet Earth to languish somewhere between agriculture and cattle breeding. Their purpose is not in world trade. And the meaning and purpose of their appearance in this point in space is certainly not to kill their own kind.
But for what purpose?
This question still has no answer for some people. Although people have been looking for an answer for as long as they have existed.
The answer is extremely simple: “To experience this World and to gain the ability to create one’s own Worlds – similar to this one or even completely different from it.”
People are here to be creative.
No other creatures except humans in our biosphere are capable of creativity (at least, without a connection with Man). But even for humans, creativity until recently came with great difficulty - few were inclined to it, sometimes even those who created could not appreciate the creative impulse - they created without realizing the full depth of the process, which was initiated, as a rule, from above. Man often suffered from his own creativity, remaining misunderstood. This is not surprising, because it was creativity that was called upon to raise Man to a higher step - closer to God, or to the Gods. Where, from whom does the creative impulse come to the mind? - this remained a mystery even for brilliant creators.
The creative process originated precisely as a recording and recreation of what opened up before the eyes of man - natural landscapes, animal neighbors on the planet, or other people. Man practically did not go beyond the boundaries of reality - neither in the visual arts, nor in music, nor in the verbal genre. In fact, music also grew out of onomatopoeia of what itself sounded around man - birds, wind, thunder or the surf.
There were only a few people who felt something in themselves that went beyond the material World. The rest of the creative individuals for thousands of years did exactly what the Itinerant artists do to this day - they copy the patterns of the World without adding anything to it beyond what was already there. When transferring a landscape to canvas, the artist spent most of the creative process comparing what he had drawn with what he had seen, eliminating the differences.
The process of control and error elimination also overwhelmed the next creative phase, when the invisible, inaudible to direct biological hearing, intangible, but still influencing their worldview became available to people in their creativity. This was already spiritual creativity - it aimed to bring something into the World of people, or even into the World of planet Earth, that initially did not exist in these Worlds.
But to transfer something from the higher Worlds to our World without significant distortions even through spiritual art was practically impossible. And not only because, descending into a smaller dimension and being born in a more limited World, the creative substance lost part of itself. In any case, it was distorted even in that part that could be transferred without distortions - precisely because of endless comparisons, corrections and successive approximations - at the time when the artist passed the creative idea through his intellect and could work only with what had already passed through his consciousness.
A new creative stage of humanity is approaching, when a work of art will not be compared with images familiar to consciousness. It will be born completely spontaneously and transmitted as is - without the desire to adapt it to this World, because the meaning of true creativity is to change this World through art, and not vice versa.
Imagine that you have in your hands a multi-colored holographic plasma from which you can sculpt Worlds. Or a ductile sound palette from which you can disperse the most incredible harmonies and melodies throughout space. And all you need is the courage to do this without looking back at anything created before. You can become completely transparent and not introduce any distortions to what voluntarily flows into this World through you, and does so only because it has chosen you - your sincerity and receptivity.
This is exactly how People will create in the very near future - without thinking about genres, styles, rules and the opinions of critics. And it is worth saying that there will be no critics left in the World of the Future, because - who became a critic? The one who did not allow the creative flow to flow freely through himself.
All that will be required of the creators of the future is to remove any tension, resistance, and not think about what is happening. And when the work is created, you can stand in line with the audience and enjoy its view - as if you have nothing to do with the creation.
