The San Gabriel Valley, outside of Los Angeles, is home to the largest concentration of Asian Americans in the US, and the area has a long and important history as an enclave for Asian immigrants. How might 88rising, a collective and platform for Asian American creatives, not only take influence from the region but truly incorporate and reflect it? In partnership with 88rising and Microsoft, we looked to AI to find a new way to compose with data for a dazzling generative remix of Warren Hue’s “Too Many Tears.” We placed a camera feeding Microsoft Vision Custom AI overlooking the valley, turning the sun, clouds, birds and other environmental features into arrangement parameters for the remix, which evolves continuously. The generative remix allows the track not only to explore themes of diversity and identity, but also uplifts and contextualizes a place that’s critical to a dynamic Asian American community.

With the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes across the US in the last 2 years, it was important to both 88rising and Microsoft to celebrate the Asian-American enclave of California’s San Gabriel Valley and shine a light on its creativity, culture, and people. The hard data used to build this interactive soundscape and web experience was the sky itself. We trained our AI to recognize specific “events” across the horizon, which Warren Hue’s soundscape could react to. The rising or setting sun, cloud formations, passing birds and planes, and the phase of the moon all triggered sonic variations in the score, which was never the same twice — reflecting the diversity of the community that inspired the project. The AI reads specific visual inputs as cues for particular compositional elements and directions. So while during the day, the music feels more downtempo and sparkling, at night, the remix takes on a more rhythmic and dance-forward quality. The remix project not only introduces users to a key geographical location but provides a kind of visual score to an original composition perpetually in flux and in sync with the community inspiring it. Users from anywhere in the world can tune in to the livestream at any time to experience this unique, data-driven perspective of being Asian in America. In terms of timeline, we began development in March 2021, and launched May 22, 2021.