Art Inhuman: Dan Schenker Creates A.I.-generated Artwork Inspired By Midtown & Cobra Starship Song Titles & Lyrics Coinciding with Resurrection Tour 2022 (Plus, New Spotify Playlist)
Art Inhuman is a collaborative effort between Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) artist Dan Schenker and writer Matt Horowitz. Dan takes band names, lyrics, and song names and with the help of A.I., manipulates them into what he feels best represents them visually. If you have a suggestion for an upcoming addition to this series, Tweet Matt at @SharpChedder856 and/or Dan at @heydanschenker and Tag the band or artist you'd like us to feature next. This project spawned from Dan's decades-long love of music. Dan had been a fan of the band FOLLY since early high school—for the blend of Punk, Ska, and Hardcore they seamlessly wove, for the energy their music made him feel, and for the almost disproportionately poetic lyrics and topics they covered. So, when Dan thought to input some of his favorite FOLLY lyrics, song titles, and album titles into Midjourney, the results were staggering. He posted them to Facebook, which caught the attention of the band, who were fascinated by the project. After the band asked to re-post Dan's work, he connected with music journalist Matt Horowitz (TheWitzard.com, NOECHO.net, IDIOTEQ.com, and more) and Art Inhuman, their semi-regular project making A.I.-generated art for some of their favorite bands, was born.
Midtown was a beloved New Jersey-based Pop-punk/Emo band initially active from 1998-2005. Midtown released three critically-acclaimed albums, which garnered cult-like followings, entitled Save The World, Lose The Girl (2000,) Living Well Is The Best Revenge (2002,) and Forget What You Know (2004) on Drive-Thru Records, MCA, and Columbia, respectively, as well as numerous EP's, splits, and compilation appearances. Since splitting up in 2005, Midtown's members would go on to make music with Cobra Starship, Senses Fail, and Band of Thieves. Additional non-musical endeavors by Midtown's one-time members would eventually include Crush Music Media Management, The Artist Group/T∆G Music, and I Surrender Records. Midtown's former members—Gabe Saporta, Tyler Rann, Heath Saraceno, and Rob Hitt—briefly reunited to play three shows in 2014, but have been largely inactive as a group since 2005. However, that all changed earleir this year, when Midtown announced they would be reuniting once more for their Resurrection Tour 2022.
They've announced a string on dates spanning from September 17th through December 10th, including a few dates with old buddies My Chemical Romance & The Acedemy Is... It seems Midtown are "literally doing it for the kids," as Saporta recently told Stereogum, since their kids had never seen their dads rock aout and do their thing. Coinciding with Midtown's Resurrection Tour 2022, Dan Schenker input some of their lyrics and song titles into his A.I. program, which, again, created some truly compelling artwork. Just for fun, he did a couple for Gabe Saporta's post-Midtown band, Cobra Starship, and Gym Class Heroes' "Taxi Driver," which name-checks Midtown, along with 25 other popular bands of the early 2000's. We've put together a Spotify playlist collecting all of the songs from this (and past iterations) of Art Inhuman for your listening pleasure. Get your tickets for Midtown's Resurrection Tour 2022 with My Chemical Romance & The Academy Is... on select dates while they're still available right here.
