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Joy

Dad recorded his baby’s sounds for a year, then used them to remake AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’

You've been thunderstruck.

Representative photo credit: Canva

Ever seen a baby "sing" a rock song before they can talk?

Few things bring as much joy to a parent’s heart as the adorable sounds their babies make. But when a dad with a vision, a camera and a year's worth of footage uses those sounds to recreate one of the most iconic rock songs ever…let's just say joy alone doesn't quite cover it.

In one of the most epically adorable and adorably epic song renditions ever, dad and video editor Matt MacMillan spliced together tiny snippets of his baby's sounds to make AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." And it's one of those things you just have to see to believe.

Baby Ryan singing "Thunderstruck" is jaw-droppingly awesome

Nothing but awe and respect for a guy who takes a whole year to get just the right sounds at the right pitches and figures out to put them together to create this masterpiece:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Making a sneeze into a cymbal? Are you kidding me?

People have been understandably impressed, with the video getting over 6 million views.

"Ryan becomes the vocalist of AB/CD."

"I need a cover in 17 years whenever he is an adult singing over the instrumentals lol"

"'I recorded my son for a full year. I edited for the next 5'"

"The fact that he genuinely found clips that fit every note he need instead of just pitch shifting like most videos like this do really makes this stand out. Good job he’s adorable."

"This dude had a kid just so he could make this song. What a Legend."

"Other parents: 'I want my child to create masterpieces.' This guy: 'my child IS the masterpiece.'"

"I'm a residential plumber and I've had an absolutely horrible day on a work shift that's lasted 13 hours and even after crawling through human poop all day this made me smile laugh and giggle like a small baby."

Believe it or not, it's not autotuned or pitch-shifted. Those notes are all baby.

The question is: How did he do it? This isn't just some autotune trick. MacMillan really did it all manually, going through each video clip of Baby Ryan, organizing them by pitch and figuring out what notes they were.

Perhaps most impressively, he didn't even know the notes of "Thunderstruck" to begin with and doesn't really read music. He had to pluck the song out on the piano and then match those notes with his baby's sounds.

As he wrote, "It took forever." But he shared an inside look at how he did it here:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Seriously, doesn't seeing how he did it make it even more impressive? Pure human creativity and perseverance on display. What a delightful gift Ryan will have for the rest of his life. Much better than a standard baby book.

Baby Ryan's "Thunderstruck" was not MacMillan's first foray into baby covers, either. He previously created a rendition of "Carol of the Bells" using Baby Ella's sounds, and it is just as impressive (and adorable) as Baby Ryan's. Here's one to add to your holiday playlist:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Here's to the humans who wow us with their ambitious, innovative projects that exist purely to bring a smile to people's faces.

You can follow Matt MacMillan on YouTube.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Science

Steve Jobs swore by this easy trick to boost his creativity and solve just about any problem

It's backed by science.

via Matthew Yohe/Wikimedia Commons

Steve Jobs in 2010

Do you ever get stuck on a problem while sitting at your desk and can’t find a solution? You wrack your brain, but you only seem to get more frustrated instead of closer to solving the issue. Steve Jobs had a way of finding inspiration when he felt his thoughts were stuck in the mud. He got up and took a walk.

Jobs was the visionary co-founder of Apple whose creativity, innovation and passion changed how people live and connect.

How did Steve Jobs solve problems?

According to Inc., Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson said, “Taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation.” “So much of our time together was spent quietly walking,” recalled legendary designer Jony Ives. Jobs did a lot of his creative thinking while walking. He often strolled around Apple’s Cupertino, California neighborhood, often holding meetings with people as they walked.

You don’t have to go this far, but Jobs often liked taking these walks barefoot.


Why is talking a walk good for creativity?

Science supports the idea that walking can boost one's problem-solving abilities. A report from Stanford found that walking can raise one's creative output by as much as 60%. “Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking. We finally may be taking a step, or two, toward discovering why,” Oppezzo and Schwartz wrote in the study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.

The researchers gave 3 reasons why they think walking is so great for creativity:

1. Mindfulness: Walking in a natural setting can reduce mental clutter and enhance focus, allowing one to see the problem with fewer mental distractions.

2. Associative thinking: The rhythmic movement of walking could stimulate the brain’s associative networks, making connecting ideas easier.

3. Freedom and exploration: Getting up and moving about may inspire a greater sense of freedom and exploration, opening you up to fresh ideas.

Another reason taking a walk is helpful to come up with fresh ideas is that breakthrough ideas often happen when the brain switches from the executive network to its default network. The executive part of the brain is goal-focused and task-oriented, but the default network is where we brainstorm. According to “In The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking,” authors Olivia Fox Cabana and Judah Pollack believe that when you’re on a walk, you have the best chance of both modes cooperating. "If we had to choose one single mindless activity for you to do, it would be walking," Cabana and Pollack conclude.

How do you get creative on a walk?

Writing tutor Sarah Salway says that if you want to walk to solve a problem, it’s best to have a clear idea of what you’re trying to solve.

“You might want to formulate a question before you start walking. As you walk with your question in mind, where your attention falls may guide you to an answer. It can be a good exercise to do with a friend. When I’ve done this, it’s astonishing how we notice completely different things and how each of us answers our own questions,” Salway writes in Psychology Today.

Next time you get stuck on something, staring at your computer screen or a blank paper sheet won’t do you much good. Get out and take a walk, preferably with a friend or colleague, to bounce ideas off of. And, if you want to walk in Jobs’ shoes, take off yours and feel the ground beneath your feet as your mind reaches for the sky.

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Art

Photographer captures water droplets—'liquid sculptures'—that look like they're alive

Absolutely breathtaking.

Ronny Tertnes/Facebook

Ronny Tertnes' "liquid sculptures" are otherworldly.

Human beings have sculpted artwork out of all kinds of materials throughout history, from clay to concrete to bronze. Some sculpt with water in the form of ice, but what if you could create sculptures with small drops of liquid?

Norwegian artist Ronny Tertnes does just that. His "liquid sculptures" look like something from another planet or another dimension, while at the same time are entirely recognizable as water droplets.

I mean, check this out:


According to SLR Lounge, Tertnes uses ultra high-speed photography, flash rigs, smoke and different types of liquids to create and capture his colorful split-second sculptures. He mixes water with various substances to create texture, color and movement in his photos, and the effect is otherworldly. He does some editing in Photoshop as well. The form in his photographs comes from the unique movement of a single droplet, which can end up looking like a human, a flower, an alien or an abstract glass sculpture. Sometimes they look like people dancing. Just incredible.

Tertnes has shared many of his photos on Facebook and on his website, where you can purchase prints, calendars and more featuring these beauties:

It's fun to ask what other people see when they look at these images.

Amazingly enough, Tertnes has described himself as a "hobby photographer."

Sometimes he creates mirror images that end up looking like animals or alien creatures.

If you're into (or have a marginal understanding of and interest in) NFTs, Tertnes has a Liquid Sculptures NFT store as well.

And finally, here's a slideshow where you can hear him play the guitar and look at his beautiful liquid sculptures. Enjoy.

This article originally appeared on 1.14.22

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Joy

Top iPad app takes a stand for human creativity, flat refusing to offer generative AI tools

The CEO and co-founder of Procreate made a blunt, powerful statement in a viral video.

Photo by Ivan Samkov/Pexels

The use of generative AI tools in art software is up for debate.

Whether we like it or not,artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived in our lives. Once only the subject of sci-fi films and tech geeks' imaginations, various iterations of AI technology are now in use across nearly every industry.

Depending on your beliefs about and understanding of AI, that's either a good or a bad thing. At this point, most people seem to recognize and acknowledge that there are some profoundly helpful uses for AI, while also feeling trepidation about the reliability of popular language learning models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other AI tools many of us have begun using regularly.

One realm that has seen significant backlash against AI is art. It's one thing for a machine to do complex equations or write code or or analyze medical images or defuse a bomb. It's another to replace human creativity with AI, which is why Procreate co-founder and CEO James Cuda is saying "no" to incorporating AI tools into the company's art software.

Procreate is a popular iPad app with the slogan "Art is for Everyone," which allows users to sketch, paint, illustrate and animate. In a video shared on X, Cuda was blunt. "I really f__king hate generative AI," he said in a post captioned, "We're never going there. Creativity is made, not generated."

"I don't like what's happening in the industry, and I don't like what it's doing to artists," he said. "We're not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products. Our products are always designed and developed with the idea that a human will be creating something."

Watch:

"We believe we're on the right path supporting human creativity," he concluded. Cuda's announcement comes as its biggest competitor, Adobe

A statement on the Procreate website explains further:

"Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future. We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us.

We're here for the humans. We're not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity. In this technological rush, this might make us an exception or seem at risk of being left behind. But we see this road less travelled as the more exciting and fruitful one for our community."

Generative AI has been labeled as theft due to the AI models using real art from real artists to generate images. Many artists celebrated Cuda's announcement, praising Procreate for supporting and empowering artists. Others said the company was being overly sentimental and out of touch with the times.

It's important to note that Cuda specifically refers to "generative AI" which does not mean all AI. Artificial intelligence isn't just one thing—there are various AI models, some of which are used for predictions and analysis and others that are used to "create." It's the generative AI used to create that has artists, musicians, writers and other creative professionals up in arms.

The question of what "counts" as art has been debated for centuries, but we've always agreed that art comes from humans. Some see art as the creative expression of the human spirit, which makes machine-created art feel soulless. Easier and more efficient, perhaps, but lacking the intangible, inspiring, intriguing quality of individual human creativity.

As Cuda said, "We don't exactly know where this story ends or where it's going to go." Perhaps resisting generative AI is a losing battle and humans are doomed to be replaced by machines. Maybe AI-generated art will simply make 100% human-created art more valuable and in-demand. Maybe there's another possibility no one has even conceived of yet. However things turn out, it's the real choices real humans make that will determine what direction we will go.

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