After a discussion with Woolion regarding some recent unsatisfying interviews in the gaming industry, I tried to think of some questions that would be a bit different from the usual: ‘how old were you when you purchased your first copy of Logic?’ ‘are you considering leaving your current activity to become a full-time Krita user?’ ‘do you feel threatened by AI?’. We are joined by georgealexndr, let’s dive in!

Flora: Speaking of the threat of AI, I’ve come across many solid productions in 2024. There is one question I want to ask each artist: in what way do you think your work is human?

Woolion: I think even one year ago it was still easy to answer this question, but now having something distinct from AI basically only means there is not enough training data yet. And this is more likely to be a bad thing than a good thing. Some great artists can retroactively “look AI” because some of their gimmicks are really effective and have been integrated in a lot of AI outputs. If it was down to rendering only, there’s no contest as AI is just so much more efficient. But having a vision and solving interesting design problems with specific constraints is not generally feasible yet, so there’s still a lot to do as an artist. Honestly I wish it was better, I’ve spent days trying pipelines to get bad AI slop.

georgealexndr: AI is an amazing tool for art, but I don’t think it can replace the human element. I think what I like about my production is how I reference things that inspire me but all AI does is generate copies of pre-existing content.

Check out Woolion and I’s game JOBifAI

Flora: I’m more comfortable nowadays about including imperfections, like unexpected vocal layers and notes, and so far that’s what seems hard for AI to replicate. Our latest release, “Second Wind”, is about different phases of life. From the initial naive joy, to the torment of existence, until the ‘second wind’ of rebirth and acceptance. To which phase do you relate the most? In other words, which song was the easiest for you to complete?

georgealexndr: Torment was one of the songs I found relatable lyrically. When I heard the vocal demo I knew what I wanted to do production-wise to match the vibe of the vocals and lyrics. Having Woolion and Flora give me feedback on what they had in mind helped too.

Woolion: Well, let’s take hardest to write; it was Second Wind, as it corresponds to my current lens. In particular, I didn’t want it to be ‘overly optimistic’. Acceptance does not mean that things are easier or that a situation isn’t bad. On the contrary. But you have to live with it, the absurdity and all.

Flora: I had fun rerecording ‘META’, it was way easier the second time! It would be quite easy building a portfolio with your existing works. But in what way is ‘Second Wind’ different from anything you’ve done before?

georgealexndr: Woolion having a clear vision of what he wanted to do with each track really helped me plan out what to do with the production and make it more of a cohesive project rather than a compilation of songs that I happened to work on in the same time frame.

Woolion: Chinese painting and digital processing are in quite a number of ways. I’ve combined them in a way that I like, and I don’t really know any artist that worked in such a way. We worked to make sure the songs made a cohesive whole, and I worked the illustrations to reflect it. I think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Flora: I often work on topline melody and lyrics from an instrumental with a determined structure, and for this EP it was almost the opposite. I worked a lot more on the song structure than on the lyrics. More like a job interview question: is there a particular technical challenge you faced during the creation of ‘Second Wind’? How did you address it?

georgealexndr: What mattered to me most was making each track sound unique, so when I was designing instruments and sounds I tried not to make it too formulaic. Instead I tried to approach each track differently and I’m happy with how it turned out. For a few tracks on the EP I tried avoiding using a generic song structure, adding drops, switching up choruses a bit.

Woolion: For all drawings, there was never a point were I felt it had truly achieved “perfection”. For each one, it took me some time to accept that I would not be able to do much better with my current abilities, and move one. All defects and imperfections are mine.

Flora: ‘META’ is one of the hardest songs I recorded in terms of timing, so it’s one of those times when I recorded like Ellie Goulding, only using the metronome. For ‘Light’, I had a special guest recording laughs, so I had to be creative with tickling and carrying the guest up and down. If someone were to be introduced to you as a fan, apart from ‘Tell me a bit about yourself,’ what would you ask that person?

georgealexndr: I think I’d want to know what else they listen to and who’s in their Spotify Wrapped (hopefully me)

Woolion: Why??? But I’d be interested in knowing what they look for in painting and music, what is the point of resonance.

Flora: How the hell did you find my works?

And this concludes this interview! You can listen to our EP “Second Wind” here: