Project summary 

I'm a poet making narrative rap songs about technological change and using rap to distill complex topics–space exploration, the misuse of AI, implications of advanced BCI, the ethics of embodied AI, and more. I’m also currently building Khema 093, a standalone instrument for finger drumming and sampling live audio–for transforming music in one continuous moment, turning a sound into a sample the moment a pad is hit. 

A part of this practice is helping build more interdisciplinary communities. A couple months ago, I was invited to a music-ai hackathon in Austria. This is a Japanese-Austrian friendship hackathon–about 120 musicians and developers from all over the world will be there, building music tools with AI. The hackathon takes place soon: Sept 11th-13th. I applied in a team of four, but funding is required for two of us and we need to confirm them by Friday, Aug 21st. See more here: https://music-ai-hackathon.com/

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

There are three broad goals for this project:

• Explore technology, science, and culture through rap–helping educate the general public in the process 

• Build instruments and tools for complementing the above and exploring the craft of rap 

• Help foster interdisciplinary communities locally and abroad 

Inspired by other independent researchers, a goal of this project is to publish research or research artifacts in an alternative form–in this case, narrative rap. A proto-version of this is Hold on, a song about a man who inherits altered genes from his astronaut grandfather (see an excerpt recording here). To write it, I asked why researchers would add tardigrade genes to human cells, what that might imply for longevity, and how that might affect people over time. Eventually, this practice will include making questions, source notes, research logs for selected songs visible–reaching people who might never read academic papers. 

Hip-Hop has always been about repurposing–but instrumentalists and electronic musicians are usually the ones in experimental-instrument communities, not rappers and beatmakers. I’d like to help change that with Khema–it will have a 4x4 drum pad layout and run on a bela board. For its prototype, I’m testing different pad materials to see which is most rhythmically responsive–Velostat, TPU, and layered CNC structures. Early in the year, I reached out to Dragon, a recently retired finger-drumming teacher. He told me he’s interested in consulting for Khema’s design. 

Concept designs for Khema can be seen here (also, excerpt of Hold On & a secondary project, Freestyle Dojo). 

For the Austria hackathon, I’m planning on sharing at least the concept designs of Khema and maybe a scaled down prototype of it–just a one-pad version connected to a bela board in an enclosure.

One of the inspirations for Khema is Renga poetry and its concept of linking verses–poets take turns writing two and three line verses, one verse connects to the immediate previous verse, but none before that. I’m planning on applying this aspect of it to Project Lydia, a DIY neural sampling device developed by Roland and Neutone, sponsors of the hackathon. This would be making a MIDI controller for Project Lydia, giving it pads for continuous triggering of its sounds transformed by AI and a software engine for the Renga linking mechanic applied to a music jam.

After the hackathon, I'll continue making narrative rap projects along with developing Khema. I'm aiming to have it demo-ready next year for interactive shows. 

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Since January, I've been in Maker Cities at Moonlighter FabLab, a residency for manufacturing, 3D printing, CNC milling, and design. 

Here is a doc of model projects I've done throughout the residency

Personal website: https://malcolm-malik.com

I mainly work on my own for my projects but for the music-AI hackathon, my team is: 

- Vishnu Sriram, https://github.com/vishnuSriram

A multi-instrumentalist, beatboxer, arranger, and iOS Swift developer–we met in college and are also in a music duo together called Gillis40 (WIP).

 - Andressa Kanashiro, https://www.andressakanashiro.com/

A product designer–we met at Manifest two years ago and started ParisTokyo together, a podcast on Japanese rap  

Her design background would go a long way for the MIDI controller for Project Lydia. We'd also be meeting Japanese musicians we could potentially interview for the podcast. 

- Rafael Franco, https://github.com/rfoel 

A JavaScript software engineer and Andressa’s partner–the two of them and Vishnu would be a great team for the software side of the MIDI controller for project Lydia or whatever we build for one of the challenges given to us. 

How will this funding be used?

The minimum funding amount, ($2k), will go towards travel to the music-AI hackathon in Austria  for the hackathon team. This would cover flights from Brazil for Andressa and Rafael. 

The next level of funding ($6k) would cover the majority of the entire team’s travel expenses.

Breakdown: 

Malcolm and Vishnu flights: $2,600

Andressa and Rafael flights: $2,000

The remaining will go towards fair for Ubers and bus rides and Airbnbs stays the nights before and after the hackathon (room and board is covered during the hackathon weekend) 

The highest level of funding ($20k+) will cover my time after the hackathon, allowing me to meet with other collaborators elsewhere in Europe, that I normally wouldn’t be able to meet with–one may be Rafaele Andrade, an experimental cellist who also develops on Bela boards–we’ve discussed collaborating online and we’d be meeting in person for the first time. These funds would also allow me to pursue a period of self-study and further develop narrative rap projects and Khema fulltime for about 6 months.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Without minimum funding, Andressa and Rafael will not be able to go to the hackathon. They’ll be able to contribute to future projects virtually, but we don’t know when all four of us would be able to meet in person given our distance.

Besides that, outcomes of failure for this project would be: not having significant work done (e.g. for rap research–a 5-10 song project on the misuse of AI) and going into too many directions at once. Also releasing songs before research is mature, leading to potential misunderstandings of complex topics. 

For Khema, failure could look like the instrument not being adequate for finger drumming and its sampling feature being tedious in some way or not as suitable for live performance as it is currently envisioned.

As for building interdisciplinary communities, there’s potential for collaborations and events to become one-offs instead of recurring and a lack of participation from various disciplines.

To avoid these failures, scheduling early on, doing projects in phases, and regularly following up with a variety of artists and builders who are enthusiastic about working together will be key. 

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

None, but while in the Maker Cities residency I received a $5,000 stipend and $750 materials budget. Some of that has gone toward purchasing materials for the Khema prototype.