Hard Bop, the King of Mischief

In Helena Sarin and Her Band, the artist presents her riff on two distinct musical forms: the intimate jazz band and the big band. Jazz, in particular, has been a key source of inspiration for Sarin, filling her studio with vibrant energy and creative spontaneity. Here, she pays tribute to these art forms, capturing their spirit in her work. Sarin notes, “To paraphrase Basquiat, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but I couldn’t play well; so my code became my music.” Her practice is uniquely suited to this musical homage. She uses Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), which she has trained on her own sketches and with aesthetic parameters of her design. Like a musician’s interpretation of sound, her GANs respond visually to her curated inputs, producing a dynamic, almost improvisational interaction between artist and machine. In this body of work, the datasets she employs are infused with the essence of big band performances and the intimate glow of late-night jazz clubs, resulting in a creative process that visually embodies these musical atmospheres. These datasets are the result of a decade worth of reportage sketches and photos captured by the artist during her time spent in the New York City jazz scene. In the world of big bands, the conductor orchestrates a medley of instruments, guiding each musician toward harmonious sound. This role mirrors that of the artist in the generative process. Sarin’s choices in selecting and arranging elements within her dataset echo the conductor’s task: each component she includes is deliberately placed to bring forth a specific visual harmony. In contrast, the jazz band operates as a tight-knit ensemble, often improvising together in real time, seemingly creating something out of nothing. While improvisation may appear mysterious, it is built on a deep mastery of musical fundamentals. Likewise, creating generative art requires a skilled understanding of foundational techniques. Sarin’s works, created by training her models on her own sketches, watercolors, and photographs, showcase a synthesis of improvisational freedom and technical foundation. The mysterious sound that evolves from improvising on fundamentals in music is akin to the concept of latent space in AI. Latent space is an abstract realm where the model stores its learned patterns, shapes, and relationships, much like the internal repertoire of a musician. For a jazz player, this latent space is composed of scales, chords, rhythmic patterns, and personal stylistic nuances, which are intuitively pulled together during improvisation. In big bands, the composer sets a foundational framework through a written score, yet there remains room for each soloist to surprise the conductor with their unique interpretation. One of jazz’s most defining practices, call and response, is similarly central to Sarin’s artistic approach. In a jazz ensemble, call and response is a lively conversation where one musician or group initiates a phrase and another replies, layering the music with spontaneous exchanges and depth. This spark of spontaneity, the element that makes jazz so captivating, finds a parallel in Sarin’s generative art process. When she creates, Sarin initiates the call through her inputs, and the machine responds with outputs that surprise and inspire. She then selects the responses that best align with her vision, embodying both the roles of conductor and improviser, bringing order to the generative process while allowing space for unexpected beauty to emerge. The result of Sarin’s use of fundamental art forms, curated inputs, and her exploration of latent space is art that feels both spontaneous and profoundly intentional, mirroring the nuanced energy of jazz and big band music.