I did not really want to do another Coldplay song, but the music was too interesting to pass up. This music caught my attention when I was in a Thunder Road mood. I idea that my music mood has a range comes from listening to the up lifting Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road (Live VH1 Storytellers),” to his followup, which counters Thunder Road, his reflective song “The Promise (Live in New York City).” Bering in a Thunder Road moment, I still needed the backup of the music’s lyrics that appear on the artwork. They read: ” Nobody said it would be easy. No one said it would be this hard.” Although I don’t think the casual viewer understandably finds this art difficult to grasp, this music’s words are relatable to me and others. They point to the value of the music being portrayed. This contrasts with the dizzying artspeak that major galleries use to describe the art and the artists they represent. Check out the Gagosian gallery’s understandable word salads, descriptions.

For this project I opened up my choices of colors to colors that only kinda work together. I have found that colors that seem to go somewhat in the same direction look fine on the finish work. An example of this is the colors of the main canvas. I list titanate yellow and a yellow green. Those colors worked together. I then mixed in a complementary medium violet, a relatable cobalt teal, and finally drifted off the color wheel with light magenta and a deeper orange. All look fine after I balance the strengths of each of the colors so that they flowed together across the canvas. My changing emphasis is now on using color strategically across the artwork’s appearance, rather than relying on dominant solid colors to dominate the artwork and therefore the viewer’s attention.

I love what I have accomplished with this cover music. What is being played and heard from each note of this cover, from its emphasis to its blending, is based only on my choices. There is no AI help in the production of this music. I know well that AI could surely improve the quality of the master of this cover, to the possibility of even being fine art music, but this art is not about fine art. My artworks reject fine art, for that is not who I am. Therefore my music to be real must come from me. I understand that many significant advantages of an AI assistant, but did Mozart, Beethoven, or Vivaldi have assistants? To be real art. The art has to be real. To be real, the music has to be real. AI is not real, not human. I am. I am here. AI machines will live forever, I will not. This is my time, my moment to let fly the butterfly effect on contemporary art.*

Scott Von Holzen

* “The butterfly effect is the idea that small, seemingly trivial events may ultimately result in something with much larger consequences” – HowStuffWorks