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= Whole note, 2= Half note y 3=Quarter note.)

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 discuss it. All these options while you listen to the playlist with all the songs mentioned + a bonus track.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4g6NRXt6oFSWKepsqgPP6y?si=16b425737f554a0a

All images correspond to captures of Epilogue by Daft Punk, published on February 21, 2021 in this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDX6wNfjqc

The quotes from Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo correspond to the magazine “Los Inrockuptibles” #181 - Argentine Edition - June 2013.

Some extra links:

• About cosmic rays: the wonderfull Pierre Auger observatory

• Around The World

• Da Funk

• One More Time

• Interstella 5555

Este texto comienza con una pregunta ¿Quedará todo automatizado en un futuro no muy lejano? Una pregunta a un amigo especialista en Machine Learning, en un patio a principios de marzo. Una pregunta que se respondió con un “te paso un link y después hablamos”. Ese enlace era el seminario El factor humano y la ciencia de datos, dictado por Pablo Duboue en FAMAF. No les voy a mentir, es muy específico y técnico, lo fui escuchando por partes y me quedé con algunos recortes. Este texto sigue con otra pregunta ¿Esos recortes me llevaron a los robots o fue al revés?

A fines de febrero el dúo francés Daft Punk publicó su Epílogo y eligieron contarlo con el hermetismo al que nos tienen acostumbrados ¿Por qué no hacerlo tocando en vivo en una terraza o subiendo a una nave nodriza interestelar? Nada de eso, solo un silencioso fragmento de Electroma que reescribe el final de aquella película de 2006 ¿Qué sucede entre Electroma, el último disco Random Access Memories y este cierre? Solo ese camino invertido, al final de la aventura, para dejar el último acto lo más abierto posible.

Mi encuentro con RAM fue singular, porque los dos singles me encontraron sin internet, sin teléfono, escuchando en radios ajenas y parando la oreja con la secreta esperanza que la locución de turno diga las palabras mágicas: Acabamos de escuchar a… Recién supe que eran los Daft Punk cuando vi la tapa de la Inrockuptibles edición argentina de junio 2013. ¿Por qué no los reconocí? Dicen en la entrevista: La música electrónica está en todos lados (…) pero experimenta un enorme formateo que a veces viene de nuestras ideas de hace diez o quince años: era fundamental diferenciarse. No fui -ni soy- del palo de la electrónica, pero ellos nunca me resultaron indiferentes. En especial cuando me cruzaba con sus videos en los canales de música a fines de los 90´ e inicios del 00´ Around The World y ese baile circular sobre una escenografía artesanal, Da Funk y el perro enyesado que camina por Nueva York con un grabador y, por último, One More Time con su estribillo pegadizo y la magnética atracción que te generaba ver los dibujitos de esa banda intergaláctica. Más tarde pude ver Interstella 5555 en donde directamente arman un musical de ciencia ficción. Todos aquellos complementos audiovisuales te mantenían pegado a la pantalla. Pero en RAM sucedía otra historia, te sacaba de la pantalla ¿Qué había en ese vibrante acceso aleatorio? un ritmo de otro planeta o eso parecía, pero no: era una resonancia que activaba una fibra en la memoria de cuatro décadas de música.

Junto al segundo corte salió un video anónimo (sospecho de ese anonimato) que hace un mash-up entre sonido e imágen, junta el segundo corte Loose Yourself To Dance con la emisión de The Soul Train en donde Stevie Wonder toca Superstition: el mismo pulso que abre la década del 70´, el mismo pulso en el que Stevie comienza a tocar todos los instrumentos en sus discos para -como dice Jonathan Lethem- superar todas las paradojas llevando la música a una concordancia total logrando el funk-pop más humano que jamás se haya grabado. Toda esa abrumadora cantidad de referencias para que ellos comiencen a cerrar su aventura con la última actuación en vivo, con Stevie Wonder en el escenario, en los Grammys 2014 y terminando su performance tocando un fragmento de Another Star del maravilloso disco doble Songs In The Key Of Life.

¿Cuántas décadas de música, baile y cuerpos en sólo 6 minutos? Pulso — Get Lucky — Pulso — Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger — Pulso — Le Freak — Pulso — One More Time — Pulso — Another Star. Latidos que atraviesan las tres décadas que cierran el último milenio, la primera del nuevo y cruzan la tierra como un rayo cósmico siguiendo su viaje en el espacio.

Volvamos al epílogo. Su partenaire estalla y Guy-Manuel camina hacia el infinito acompañado por un coro que repite como un mantra el estribillo de Touch, suena: Hold on, if love is the answer / You hold. Después de 15 años reescriben el final de Electroma y el robot dorado ya no termina quemandosé a lo Bonzo sino que se recuesta sobre el paisaje y el coro infantil. En su camino hacia lo múltiple, los robots encuentran una sensibilidad que pasa por tantos predicados como sea posible; haciendo de ese pasado de influencias algo que no desvaría errático, sino que resiste en una amorosa forma de hacer con la espera ¿No es acaso el pulso musical la distancia, el silencio entre un compás y el que le sigue? En ese trayecto, en ese corte, está la espera como una manera de hacer algo nuevo. Sin nombre aún y, sin dudas, con algo de azar. El final es solo el inicio, como la leyenda del Fénix, y lo que mantiene al mundo girando es el impulso del comienzo. Cierra el epílogo con las manos de cada robot y una fecha, a la manera de un ¿epitafio? que pareciera decir Que nuestras manos nada sepan / de la otra orilla.

Ahora sí, dos cosas del seminario de Duboue que me llevaron a este ejercicio. Por un lado el título, la decisión y el énfasis en ubicar lo humano ¿Qué detecta Duboue que lo lleva a esa afirmación? ¿Acaso es una obviedad que se está dejando de lado y es necesario remarcarlo? ¿Es el título del seminario la carta robada de Auguste Dupin? Hay una audacia ahí que pareciera desvelar algo. El otro punto en que me detuve fue casi a la mitad en donde cita un verso de Dylan Thomas Do not go gently into that good night que elijo traducir de esta manera No entres dócil en esa noche clara. Una advertencia, una pausa, un corte y una asociación para hacer preguntas. En ese verso reside el núcleo que saco de contexto e intento llevarlo más-allá-de-la-técnica en una especie de síntesis: No seamos demasiado humanos.

El mismo día en que los robots dejaron la eternidad y volvieron al espacio, circuló un video que desglosa el sample de One More Time, la canción que abrió el nuevo milenio. (hacer clic acá 👆)

¿Cuántas horas inútiles? ¿Cuántas tomas descartadas? ¿Es algo que se puede medir o nos dejamos maravillar por el misterio? Si ven el video pueden ver tres segmentos o, mejor aún, tres distancias que saltar, rodear, saltear. Si los numeramos, la secuencia rítmica sería algo así: 2–2–2 // 1 // 2–2–2 // 1 // 2–2–2 // 1 // 3–3–3–3–3–3–3 // 1. (1= Redonda, 2= Blanca y 3=Negra.)

En la espera están el corte y el trayecto y esa distancia pareciera volverse una presencia en el descuido (in)deciso. Dos pausas, el mismo pulso: el título y el verso que parecieran compartir el camino del dúo francés. Un tiempo (un espacio) que hace corte al devenir errático para escuchar, mirar, tocar y decidir de otra forma. Será la posibilidad de nombrar, será la habilidad para modificar un punto de vista, será la obstinación para encontrar ese instante que haga temblar el automatismo errático. En esa singularidad estaría -quiero creer- el factor humano. Abrazar la distancia como uno de los modos de reconocer lo imposible para que surja algo nuevo, como en muchas disciplinas y oficios: el espacio entre el inicio y el cierre de un cuento, entre ritmo y sentido en un poema, entre emisor y receptor en la comunicación, entre el 0 y el 1, entre lo particular y lo general. Dos cifras para contar, unir, desgranar y, por qué no, ocultar: el silencio está ahí.

Los robots se van distintos, sampleando sus propios riffs “Con un sintetizador analógico incluso la temperatura de la habitación influye en el sonido. Todos esos parásitos, esos factores exteriores, creaban cierto ambiente en los que la electrónica sonaba de forma muy viva.” dejando que la tierra haga lo suyo y le dan a sus actos una finalidad tocando -por última vez en vivo- cuatro décadas de música en 6 minutos, haciendo bailar a todos. Un cierre que tiene nombre: Get Lucky/Another Star. También parecen decir que toda espera es inútil, como este sample que comenzó con una pregunta en un patio, siguió con un link, un título y una cita de Dylan Thomas que si de algo sabía era de eso, y nos advierte una vez más: Do not go gently into that good night. Los robots complementan y en su aventura nos dicen que no tapemos esa distancia, así sea la más ínfima entre un pulso y otro, entre una nota y la que sigue; porque eso solo se convertiría en un espacio infinito y mudo. Después de la noche hay un amanecer y si tenemos suerte encontraremos otra estrella, a la que también le pondremos un nombre.

¿Te gustó el artículo? podés compartir, donar y debatir. Todas esas opciones mientras escuchás la playlist con todas las canciones que se citan en el artículo+un bonus track.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4g6NRXt6oFSWKepsqgPP6y?si=0e0e1321fbbd4d9c

Todas las imágenes corresponden a capturas de Epilogue por Daft Punk publicado el 21 de febrero de 2021 en este link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDX6wNfjqc

Las citas textuales de Thomas Bangalter y Guy-Manuel de Homem​-Christo corresponden a la revista Los Inrockuptibles #181 — Edición Argentina — Junio 2013

Algunos links extras:

• Qué podemos aprender de Daft Punk por José Heinz

• Sobre los rayos cósmicos: el maravilloso observatorio Pierre Auger

• Around The World

• Da Funk

• One More Time

• Interstella 5555

Will there be a last letter? After nine months of quarantine, I proposed to my wife to write letters to each other. The five of us (our two daughters and our dog) have been living in the same space for nine months. We were tired of working without the distance we had to cover from the office, to the school. Our daughters were tired too (apparently it’s not cool to have your parents as teachers). On the other hand, our dog was very happy with that routine. For her, every day was a party that began and finished without people leaving her alone. At the same time, there was another pandemic: the information one. A virus that gets inside our homes whether you want it or not: Sanitize like this, That Vaccine is the perfect one, The number of cases increases every day, Look at Santino of Venice how he started singing from his balcony and everyone joined him from their apartments, The economy collapse (again and again and again). Also, I´ll be honest, it´s possible that watching the six seasons and the film “Downton Abbey” could have influenced me a bit too. In that TV show, letters are sometimes the main characters. Some scenes where somebody reads a letter reminded me of Vermeer’s work about intimate spaces and their lights and shadows.

In 1994 Vivian Gornick, in her essay *Letters Are Acts of Faith; Telephone Calls Are a Reflex, *writes the story of Mr. Levinson and his overflowing heart and how he finds in writing letters variations of response he allowed himself only in writing, never face to face. Then she makes an interesting analogy between the letters of Mr. Levinson and the phone calls from her friend Laura:

Mr. Levinson´s letter resembles the social novel of a hundred years ago and Laura´s phone call a piece of 20th century minimalism.

Then, the letters of a couple in this Realistic Dystopia that we call “21st century”, which is living together in the same space: working, cooking, sleeping, teaching their daughters, the schedules, the video calls with the family, Whatsapp, mail, zoom, meet, Jitsi, uncountable hours of music, films, sitcoms, news. I think our overflowing hearts were looking for relief, and the letters came to us as a true act of faith.

So, I wrote the first letter:

A letter, yes, to get closer and keep a distance. A distance that I imagine arises from being in the same space for so long (hello pandemic), a way to create a temporary fiction? What can be the topic? Shall we delimit it or do we let what arises emerge? Are the events of our intimate daily life worth it? Can this mode be a way to create new layers of intimacy outside of time, day to day and all those minutiae?

And why all that wandering? I have no reason, I have no subject, just a feeling of emptiness, a kind of anguish because I don’t know what to write. So I start like this: the reflection of the November sun, a heavy and oppressive day where the north wind destroys you. However, the sun is reflected in the leaves of the ivy and thus I can go from the green of the Bougainvillea to the green of the ivy: two tones, two moments, two reflections. Today I did not see the hummingbirds, could it be because of the heat?

Now I can see that it was an exercise, a movement: raise your head and look at what a window can give you everyday. A description after the questions. Since I work from home I see the hummingbirds in my garden, I sometimes stay so quiet that they float in front of me at the window. After they go I remain as if My goal in life was to be an echo (…) floating fast like a hummingbird.

In 1983, Chris Marker released Sunless, a documentary. There’s a woman´s voice that reads letters and the same voice answers those letters while reading them. After five minutes you can get into an expressive intimacy and the documentary turns into a Travel Chronicle or Diary. During the journey, you can see a lot of details: a ferry horn, three children on a road in Iceland, two dogs playing with the sea, and a market lady of Praia that had lasted only the length of a film frame. The two characters alternate. When she reads the letters, she starts *He wrote me / He used to write me / He told me:…*But sometimes the images and the voice are so expressive, that it seems like you are in a chain made of instants. Pieces of images and phrases that become a constant presence. As if those images were pieces with familiar shapes, but, while images and voice dance, that familiar shape disappears and creates a new one. In a fragment, Sandor Krasna (the fictional cameraman that sends the letters to the voice), wrote a variation about time, he wrote/she reads:

He used to write to me from Africa. He contrasted African time to European time, and also to Asian time. He said that in the 19th century mankind had come to terms with space, and that the great question of the 20th was the coexistence of different concepts of time.

Is it possible that the pandemic was the beginning of the 21st Century and the coexistence of different concepts of time and space?

[Sans Soleil 1983 Chris Marker Trailer] 

I received her answer, she wrote:

So I bring this phrase: “In the true place, time gets rid of us” (Bonnefoy). Near and far at the same time. Familiar but strange. Disappearing to make a new encounter possible, like the sign of the lighthouse in the sea. What´s the sense anyway?

And the space transforms itself.

I don’t know if this exercise that started with a What if…? will go somewhere or if it is only a reflex act of faith to survive this life anxious for the absolute. So, It was a useless exercise. A useless way to get out of the world just for a bit to recover and create a new language. Is that possible? We don´t know, that’s the beauty. In that useless way of not calculating, the flavor resides. Time to stop, a space to roam: a singular way to create something new, a way that gave the space between words a specific direction, an intimate place that remains there. Perhaps, the essay of Vivian Gornick gives us a solution that goes beyond writing letters. Now I think I can finally see what she means when she writes:

Letter is not the noble enterprise. Remaining fully expressive is the noble enterprise.

So, as Chris Marker or Alexandra Stewart´s voice or Sandor Krasna did in “Sunless’’ I finish with the same question: Will there be a last letter?

Did you like the essay? You can share it, applaud it and discuss it. All those options, while you listen to the playlist focused in letters + two bonus tracks.

[The Space Between Words playlist] 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6sSSpUYBkSovArMP2oFaKa?si=a62db1d709734fed

Cover Images: Johannes Vermeer “A Young Woman Reading” and Mike Licht “Portrait of a Lady Blogging, after Vermeer”.

• About Johannes Vermeer: Britannica

• Vivian Gornik in FILBA

• About Chris Marker IMDB and Chris Marker :: Notes from the Era of Imperfect Memory