{"id":1858,"date":"2021-10-27T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2025-12-19T13:56:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:56:16","slug":"open-call-through-the-eyes-of-the-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/open-call-through-the-eyes-of-the-winners","title":{"rendered":"Open Call through the eyes of the winners","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mubert held its first Generative Music Competition Open Call<\/a> this summer, giving artists an opportunity to collaborate with Mubert Studio and to compete for a chance to be featured in a full-page ad layout in The Wire magazine. As with all our projects, Mubert\u2019s mission is to empower and protect creators. In this Open Call, the team wanted to support artists, help them promote themselves, and earn revenue through creating tokenized collections. Thus, five winners were offered a chance to create a collection of generative NFTs, which are now available on Rarible<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The submissions window was open from July 13 to August 22, the winners were chosen by the judging panel \u2014 Shane Woolman, Jay Glass Dubs, and Simon Ballard \u2014 and announced on September 1. Berke Can \u00d6zcan<\/a> took first place with his Sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy<\/em> piece, winning the feature in The Wire magazine, with Jodi Rose<\/a>, Cecilia Thorausch<\/a>, FuturFrukt, and \u042d\u04149\u041c<\/a> making up the rest of the top-five artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mubert<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All of the winning musicians entered the contest for different reasons. For Jodi, it was curiosity about the potential for collaboration with Mubert AI and the possibility to release an NFT together. For Berke, it was the opportunity to be featured in the magazine he religiously reads every month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, Anna Pishkina (\u042d\u04149\u041c) didn\u2019t initially create her composition for the contest \u2014 she wanted to explore the idea of creating not just a stream, but a generative song with Mubert\u2019s help. Her friend Ilya, with whom she makes music, trained a neural network to depict chthonic landscapes with Russian panel houses and turned it into a generative video. \u201cNeurussia, dull mangled houses created by the neural network, generative video with crumbling and re-emerging panel buildings really suited the idea of an endless generative song and the Mubert environment,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When approaching her piece, Jodi was focused on developing a continuation of her long-term creative project, Singing Bridges<\/em>. \u201cThe source material is all field recordings made using contact microphones to capture the vibrations inside bridge structures around the world,\u201d the artist elaborates, describing how she has been creating experimental music, live concerts, site-specific performances, and installations with bridges globally since 1995. This particular piece, Signal on the Silver Bridge<\/em>, consists of three parts which explore the everyday \u201ccrossing\u201d over bridges, the sound of the cables that raise the voice of the bridge to the sky and give a space for reflection on eternity and the spiritual through sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mubert<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cecilia also honed in on her immediate surroundings. For this piece, she stopped on Kottbusser Tor, which is very multifaceted. \u201cBesides the chaos, the violence, \u2026 the bars, and the poverty, there is also an order in between,\u201d Thorausch says. Originally wanting to convey the tension, she was able to capture the order in the chaos and Mubert\u2019s AI made the compositions \u201cmore mellow and gentle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most artists, this was their first time collaborating with artificial intelligence. \u201c[I\u2019ve] never ever gone anywhere near AI before,\u201d Berke tells me, He wasn\u2019t the only one \u2014 although Cecilia developed an interactive interface in Ableton during her studies, this competition was her first experience interacting this closely with AI. Nevertheless, both found the software very easy to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mubert<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jodi wasn\u2019t new to experimenting with technologies but she quickly realized that all of those services required a steep learning curve. \u201cI found myself overwhelmed by the coding needed to work with web audio or deep neural networks and transformer models,\u201d. In fact, she found Mubert while researching how to start creating music with AI. \u201cI like how user-friendly the interface is, the layout was clear and the process relatively straightforward.\u201d For Anna, it was also a smooth transition having worked with a plethora of various software. \u201cI liked the user interface: it was intuitive so I had no trouble preparing a sample pack and uploading the track,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, co-creating music with technology influenced the music-making process and gave more room for experimentation. Berke shares that when he wasn\u2019t entirely in control of the outcome, it allowed him to hear it in a new way: in his words, \u201cit helped focus on the colors more than trying to see the big picture\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pishkina (\u042d\u04149\u041c) had to re-invent her entire process, dedicating more time to improvisation and playing around with contrasting versions. \u201cAs a result, the work turned out to be more voluminous and creative,\u201d adding that she will definitely continue using Mubert AI Studio in the future as both the process and the environment itself were really enjoyable, making you invent something new and become creative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mubert<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even though Cecilia found the collaboration with the algorithm annoying as she couldn\u2019t do exactly what she wanted to, she found that cooperating with the machine turned out to be exciting. Conversely, Jodi considered the part of sharing creative decisions with the technology to be mysterious but interesting, as it led her to discover ways to adapt the outcome to her style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going into the Open Call, none of the artists had any expectations and were just doing it out of curiosity and fun. However, getting to participate in the NFT collection and winning a feature ad in The Wire magazine has brought a lot of excitement. \u201cBeing in [the magazine] is something special for me because I [have been] a follower for many years,\u201d Berke conveys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mubert<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Anna admits that she believed her composition didn\u2019t fit the format and was pleasantly surprised when she received the news that her stream made it into the top 5. \u201cI am intrigued by the pitch Mubert makes to help musicians support their work in tangible ways and of course the chance to be on their radar with a high profile outcome and the NFT release is an amazing opportunity to reach new audiences,\u201d Rose concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mubert\u2019s Open Call top-five artists unpack their experiences of working with Mubert AI, the musical ideas behind their compositions, and thoughts on winning.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":6,"featured_media":1859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[81,80,82,71,70],"class_list":["post-1858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-artist-interviews","tag-artists","tag-interviews","tag-nfts","tag-opencall"],"aioseo_notices":[],"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1858"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3022,"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions\/3022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mubert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}