“It’s a great time for creatives, in the space of a few years we have had so many tools available to express our creativity like never before.” Jean Michel Jarre he is an optimist. We met the composer, performer and producer, one of the fathers of electronic music, atOnMetaverse Summitan international conference dedicated to digital transformation and the future of innovation, in which he spoke about new creative models and immersive technologiesbut also (of the lack) of European innovation policy, of control, of emotions.
“Emotions and sensations have not changed over the centuries, but the tools have, and a lot. But an artist must still arouse and share these emotions, whatever tool he uses.” And now the “tools” are immersive reality, the metaverse, artificial intelligence.
Optimistic, therefore, not techno-optimistic however: “Technology is neutral, rules are needed to govern it. They are the rules that give access to freedom”.
And Europe is ahead from this point of view. The world looks to Europeans as those who set the rules. The same will have to happen for generative AI. In the case of copyright, for example, “You need a algorithm that is able to trace the sources used by the AI, and then a new system that gives the authors of those sources fair compensation. The concept of intellectual property comes from continental Europe and authors from all over the world look to us to defend their rights.”
“Without being naive [ingenui, ndr]: every technology is in some way disruptivee creativity is also a bit ‘stealing’ from others. A slightly provocative example? Picasso he drew heavily on primitive African art.”
But the role of controller is tight for the musician from Lyon, “Europe must reclaim technology, in areas such as web 3.0. we have to create a European tech ecosystem, we cannot follow the lead of the USA and Asia, and we must also take control of music distribution tools. Impossible? I wouldn’t say so, let’s think about Airbus: when it was born 40 years ago no one thought it could compete with the American Boeing, and now American Airlines uses Airbus. Why couldn’t the same be done in some areas of tech? There are the resources, the skills, the market. I am surprised that few European governments and politicians think this way.”
Aren’t you afraid of new technologies? Many fear that they will take our jobs away, or even that they could endanger humanity itself.
“There is no need to be afraid, it is not because I use the laptop or the synthesizer that the violin has disappeared, in fact there are more people who play the violin today than 200 years ago. At the same time we must not be naive, we need to be aware of what we are doing, the tools we use and why we use them. And – I’ll say it again – rules are needed.”
“Not be naive” is a phrase that recurs several times in our interview, “I mean that there is no point in seeing everything as beautiful or everything as ugly, you also need to be aware of reality, we don’t live in a fairy tale, we have to document ourselves“.
Jarre, pioneer of electronic music since 1976, when his album was released Oxygen which has sold over 85 million copies worldwide, is an optimist Because: his enthusiasm for the possibilities of musical art today is the result of a profound knowledge of music but also new tools (from the recorder with which music was once processed, “as my teachers Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer did”, up to the metaverse and the immersive reality.
“I think the latter is one true revolution in the musical field, it allows us to break the barrier of space. Although almost everyone who deals with the metaverse talks above all about vision, in reality the truly immersive sense is hearing. Sound is all around us, always, at 360 degrees. But so far the music has been enjoyed head-on, stereophony is too. In concerts the orchestra and the performer are in front of us. And this is a handicap, which we have also somehow self-imposed: in very few have tried to break this spatial limit, even from a compositional point of view. The real change brought about by virtual and immersive reality technology is the breaking of this barrier. Finally we can play at 360 degreesas happens in reality: in a city or in a forest the sound comes from all sides”.
Doesn’t it seem like a paradox to you that with all these incredible technological advances in reality the quality of the music has deteriorated compared to 15-20 years ago? It is increasingly enjoyed via TV, computer or smartphone, which have a truly poor musical performance.
“I think that the day the MP3 was presented was a black day in the history of music. But I think that new generations will have access to better quality music. At music festivals, playback systems are now very sophisticated, electric cars are becoming pocket auditoriums, headphones and earphones are getting better and better: importance is once again being given to sound quality, which has been somewhat neglected in recent years.”
Speaking of cars, how is the experience with Renault for the producing the sounds of their electric cars?
“Extremely interesting, there is one double challenge, going from the noise emitted by the physical movement of the motor to a digital sound emitted by a small speaker. And then create an audible sound, for safety reasons, which however does not contribute to increasing noise pollution in which we are all immersed. And then there is the psychological side, for example for us the power of a car is intrinsically linked to the noise it makes.”
In short, these are truly exciting times for an “optimist of reason” like Jean-Michel Jarre.