Eliza & Parry out 3.29!
Over the course of the last 18 months, against our better judgement, we’ve been piecing together a concept record. A couple hundred listeners max on Spotify, and yet, we’re gonna go full artsy with it.
A buzzword now, AI had been part of Air Chrysalis’ live experience since the first show in 2021, with each performance centered around a loose narrative told through some of the extremely nascent publicly-available AI manipulation software, to often hilarious results. Splayed across a large screen, one of the first stories involved a HR-adjacent young woman making announcements about the show before she began to glitch out and adopt a nihilist worldview right before the last song. It was good for a laugh.
One year later, AI had permeated the imaginations of the creatives and the curious, with intentions both benevolent and nefarious. AI, however, has been an ongoing experiment since the middle of the last century, as students of Alan Turing will tell you.
ELIZA and PARRY are two early milestones in the history of computer-based simulations. ELIZA was created by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the mid-60s. It is one of the first chatbots ever developed, designed to mimic a Rogerian psychotherapist and engaging users in conversation by rephrasing much of the users’ statements as questions. Despite its simple mechanism, ELIZA was surprisingly effective at creating an illusion of understanding and empathy, leading some users to attribute human-like feelings to the machine.
In contrast, PARRY was developed by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby in the early 1970s to simulate a patient with paranoid schizophrenia. PARRY’s responses were more sophisticated than ELIZA’s, incorporating a model of the emotional state and attitudes of a paranoid individual, making it a more complex early example of a computer program attempting to model aspects of human thought and behavior. Both ELIZA and PARRY were significant for their time, showcasing the potential of computers to mimic and study human psychological processes, laying foundational concepts for the development of modern conversational AI. The binary of their contrasting demeanors existed in a chaotic conversation without consequence.
This record represents the ambience and tenor of this dialogue through a dozen songs split between the imagined artificial experiences of both Eliza and Parry, and its larger implications to the human experience. For example, no less than half of this copy was written by a machine. Can you guess which?
Live radio performance and interview!
Sorry for radio silence! We’ve got lots of news.
OK! Two things. First, you may have seen a steady stream of singles we’ve been promoting and popping up in your streaming services. This is all ramping up to our forthcoming full-length, due out sometime in late 2023 or early 2024, depending on us getting our shit together. We’re excited.
Secondly, we’ve got shows! Too many to list here on the main page, so point your cursor toward TOUR for more info. Be sure to select FRAMES in your browser. Stay blessed.
Have you checked out ACFM?!
From time to time we put out some very cool mixtapes, and sometimes we even get to spin these jams on real airwaves. Phase in to WXOX 97.1 on June 22nd!
See us at Poorcastle 2022!
We’re headlining Sunday night. We hit the stage at 10:15 p.m. Can’t wait to share the evening with our friends Genevva, Lacey Guthrie, and more!
Debut album out now!
Miniature Comet was released last week and the reception has been both very chill and good. We got some very nice write ups in the LEO Weekly. Here’s what Syd Bishop had to say!
There is an ease to Air Chrysalis part and parcel to an eager attention to detail and rigorous practice routine, the kind that makes the challenging seem simple. With Miniature Comet, the duo offers up an ethereal pop masterpiece that recalls synth-heavy indie bands like Air or Beach House as filtered through Ennio Morricone. Clocking in at eight songs, Miniature Comet has the soul of Boards of Canada, hazy and groove-heavy, but with an incredible pop sensibility. These songs are catchy and will absolutely take root in your mind, a collection of earworms that invite you to revisit over and over. Compositionally, songs like “In This Starlight” highlight their wonderful use of harmonic tension, between the bass and drum groove, the guitar/synth work and the vocals, which all carve out their own unique niche. This is a wonderful album that, even on the coldest winter days, will brighten and complement your day.
Miniature Comet release show
Gonna have a real big time at the Zanzabar celebrating the release of our full-length Miniature Comet, out everywhere you like to stream stuff on JANUARY 15TH! Routine Caffeine and Parister will be joining!
