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At the time of writing this article, I am finding that there is this ever increasing eminence, like a rising pinnacle or  surging apex of brilliance when I write anything about R3cords. I feel like I’m in awe constantly, as though there’s an entire world which I never knew existed, and it’s right here in our own world.

I recently wrote an article about Kat from R3cords’s ‘Get Ur Sword’. And we touched on the subject of Artificial Intelligence, a particular project that Kat and her father started together way back in 2001, and also ‘LY’ a newer project seeded from the DSSCW AI project previously mentioned.

Kat mentioned something at the end of my last chat with her, quote; “LY is definitely not a popstar just yet! She’s just a girl, simply dreaming about it right now… And I don’t want to get it wrong this time.”… So I had to ask, what do you mean by, you don’t want to get it wrong this time.

This was when she mentioned the Seth.obj project, a project started in 2019 that was put to an end within a year. She also gave me some more information on the fundamentals of how the DSSCW AI works.

Kat stated; “developing our own real time interactive 3d physics engine was far beyond our own scope, in terms of both time and finance.

So game engines such as Unreal Engine, Unity and currently Godot, have all been absolute crucial tools in developing real time interactions within the 3d environments for the DSSCW AI’s, Effectively creating a bottleneck in terms of learning to be human to at least a degree.

The use of a game engine acts as a modular interactive interface for the DSSCW AI to operate within. This allows the DSSCW AI to be limited to only human like interactions in terms of real world limitations and movement. Allowing it to create more realistic and logical leaps when in a procedural Dream State within a Self Contained World.”

This means that the AI is not coded within the game engine itself, instead it is directly linked to it. In effect, the game engine only acts a stage for the AI to roam upon, very much the same as how you would control a character within a game, (As stated in the previous article ” An AI Powered Popstar”) the AI is linked to a controller program which controls its avatar within a 3d environment.

Only the AI had to learn how to completely control its avatar in every aspect, very similar to how you learn to completely control your own body growing up. 

The idea comes from having the AI learn through trial and error, the key is remembering those failures. Knowing what not to do, is just as important as knowing what to do.  

Starting over means going back to the seed state: The seed state is the most stable and neutrally balanced version of the AI, in terms of its characteristic traits, personality, and motor skills. Basically a blank slate, or perhaps it’s even more fitting as a kind of baby, that can walk, talk, read and write… And a few more things.

The Seth.obj project started in early 2019, and Biggs Malone wanted to be the lead trainer on this project. Kat again stated; “Training a DSSCW AI from seed state is pretty much like keeping a cyber pet alive, but obviously it can comprehend very complex concepts… But it’s way cooler, and isn’t a waste of time, if you do it right.”   

Biggs’s idea was to train the AI to be a social media personality and also be a potential music personality. I asked Biggs on what he had to say on how he approached starting the project, he said; “I’m really not like Kat. She’s a genius, so obviously she’d actually done pretty much everything at the start, and then I just kind of kept the ball rolling later on. So she trained the algorithm in two main ways at the start, firstly feeding an incredible amount of information from the top 100 social media influencers at the time, on all platforms. like how they respond to messages, when to post, how they jump on trends… Everything!   

The room loads in, it’s all grey walls and then you can see the textures kind of loading onto them… And then Seth.obj loads in, but at first we wasn’t met with a singular human like silhouette, as expected. It was a big mess of polygons with no real structure to it.

Again Kat said “Just give it a sec!” As the polygons got smaller and smaller, and the shape became more and more defined. I said “What is this? It’s never a horse! Is it an animal.. What!?” I really couldn’t make out what was happening.

And after about a minute, Seth.obj took on the shapes of not one, but two human like silhouettes. The larger one, stood directly in front of the other. That’s when the textures began to load in, and we begin to see all the colors and details. And I was blown away at what it came up with.

We all just kind stared with our mouths open. Trying to process what we were actually looking at… And the two characters snapped to a pose, looking straight at us… And now, just before I tell you happened, I’ve got to tell you exactly what we was looking at.

The AI had created itself into two separate forms, with the clear parameters we’d given it, using Kats algorithm. So with all the knowledge from the top 100 social media influencers across all platforms, and the complete history of every single pop star in the world, that we fed into the algorithm…   

And just before I tell you what it said, I may as well as tell you now, but it was always the girl that did the talking, the puppet never spoke once. Anyway, they both looked down, smirked for a second, and then said. “I’m not naked… And it’s just me, silly.”

I was kind of thinking this might have been a mistake at this point, but Kat dived in saying “Can you expand upon your answer?” and without any hesitation Seth.obj answered immediately.

 “My clothes are both the observer and the puppet, I am never naked because my perceived intimate areas are always covered up. Stats indicate that both popstars and influencers commonly take full advantage of lewd playfulness, sexuality and artistic expression in their public image. And I am Set dot oh be jay, one entity.”

Ok so, now I was getting it. The AI actually did something innovatively artistic, by creating its own image in a way that only it could… I mean I was expecting something like a flowery dress or a crop top and jeans or something but… A profound concept? It was brilliant.

So I gave Kat the OK, she gave Seth.obj access to a virtual desktop. Which of course, only had access to certain social media sites. And we just began the new training process, trying to build its character, teaching it our own opinions along with conflicting opinions from others. From this point on it was just a kind of unexplored area, because we wanted to have some kind of input with our own ideas, we just didn’t really have a clue what might happen.       

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Predominantly inspired by the music of the 8 and 16-bit gaming consoles of the ’90s. In contrast, many artists who draw similar inspirations tend to lean more towards the purism spectrum. Whilst Get Ur Sword likes to mix the older aesthetics with more modern techniques. The music of Get Ur Sword is created by Kat, here’s what she had to say;

“Hi, my name’s Kat, and ‘Get Ur Sword’ is my thing, and I should really figure out a proper way of saying that!… Ah so yeah, with my music, I like to start with pure purism, and once I’ve got the feel for it. That melody, those overtones. I just stop, I make myself a drink, check some posts, buy some cool shoes. I take a step back, thinking about my music. I don’t really have a name for it but Biggs says that I approach my music with more of a progressive archetype. Which seems cool to me!

My music is about making you feel just like how you felt back when you played your favourite games… Those amazing moments when you kicked ass… That moment where you had just overcome something so impossibly difficult, but you did it and it just felt so awesome…. Those rushes of excitement, anticipation…. Fear, heartbreak, the fight, the grandeur and the majesty… Of winning! In all its forms.

The thing is, all those feelings are just so brief. They’re fleeting, gone before you even realize how great it all was, but it’s still there, happening, and your mind opens up. reflecting back… “Just then, the timing, it’s perfect! The jump, the angle!… Everything. Just perfect.”… Dopamine, dopamine….. Dopamine!.. I mean. We’re all just a bunch of junkies, aren’t we?… But still, it’s those very*, brief moments, we all forever reflect upon, and my music reflection on that.”

*(very), “very” is a Homonym and in this case is being using both of its meanings as an adjective and adverb, simultaneously.
With “very” ; [adj] in meta ; “In absolute, referring to the paradigm.”
And “very” : [advrb] in meta ;”These moments are to a high degree, brief.”

She told me that it isn’t just simply a game to her, but it’s a link to her own past, a nostalgic adventure that she once had with her father. And after finishing the first part (The remake is being released as a series of games).

Kat told me; “I feel as though the remake is very much like a metaphor to me, It’s an amazing way to reflect on my own life, revisiting the past whilst carrying so many memories of both of the game and my own life from back then when I played it with my father.”

Her eyes were watering, and I could see how much it meant to her. I’d never considered a computer game could conjure up such a strong connection. It’s an adventure they once both had together, and now it’s something that’s been built upon, expanded and enhanced. Just like how she carried on with the DSSCW AI project, building upon the adventure that they once had together. It’s beautiful.

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The idea of an AI popstar is as profound and interesting to some, as much as it might be ludicrous or even terrifying to others. To Kat however (from, Get Ur Sword), it is an absolute labor of love. A project which she has been working on (at the date of posting this article), for approximately two thirds of her life.

The popstar part of the project however was not the original intention when it first started. It extends from a fork that was seeded from the original AI project. The original project being the DSSCW AI, which was started in 2001 as a joint hobby project with her father. Unfortunately  he passed away 14 years later. But Kat carried on the project by herself, and then later with financial support from R3cords Executives Mr Stuart and Biggs Malone.

She originally met Biggs and Mr Stuart when she was the drummer for ‘Chase and the Dead’. A band which Biggs managed like a passion project. After the band discontinued, when she wasn’t working on the AI project, she started writing a lot of music based around retro game music, but with a modern twist. Under the name Get Ur Sword. 

A savvy coder with a passion for games and music. The perfect ingredients! It wasn’t long after her father passed that she became obsessed with creating an AI popstar. One that could question and reflect, obsess and fear, love and hate. To be like a human, and not more than, to have the simple elegance of nuanced complex comprehensions. 

She told me earlier about that the moment the idea came to her, saying; “What if I built a world for the AI to effectively live in, a simple virtual world with-in a game engine. It’s already a multi-part AI, it can play games, it can have intellectual conversations and it even forms opinions. It’s able to recognize objects and figure out their uses, through context, mirroring and direct instructions. That’s how much training has gone into it already.”

Kat poured all of her effort into building a home for the AI. The most  important part of the idea, was that fact the AI had to live like a human. This meant slowing down it’s ability to take in and also output information as well as action. Effectively creating a bottleneck. 

The virtual world in which the AI controls it’s own avatar in, has same physics as our own, like gravity, friction and mass etc. There’s even things that can effect the avatar due to those rules, for example;

If it trips and falls over, it can become injured, meaning all the areas of the avatar that were hit, become afflicted in the relevant ways. 

The controller is what takes care of the affliction, depending on the injury it can restrict movement, which can hinder other tasks the AI may need to do. Such as, reaching up to get a pan off of a shelf, so that the AI can prepare food to feed itself.

Which in turn would give it more energy so it could heal quicker, along with a precession of other reasons, including subtleties with psychological factors and restrictions.

Kat has endeavored to make the AI’s world as real as her own. Even down to the reclusive fact, that all the AI really gets to see of the outside world, is through the videos that it watches with Kat on a shared screen she controls. Which is mostly just Youtube videos and movies from various streaming providers.

Who or What Was Seth.obj

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