{"id":25413,"date":"2012-10-09T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/?p=25413"},"modified":"2012-10-09T12:39:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T18:39:53","slug":"the-feedback-loop-derek-webbs-struggle-for-ctrl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2012\/10\/the-feedback-loop-derek-webbs-struggle-for-ctrl\/","title":{"rendered":"The Feedback Loop: Derek Webb’s Struggle For “Ctrl”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Feedback Loop<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is a weekly column by Luke Larsen that seeks to find God amidst the newest trends in both mainstream music and independent music.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Technology, especially with regard to human development and evolution, is often used as a means of organizing and making sense of life. It\u2019s meant to give us more efficiency, more control. But at what point do we start losing control to that technology?<\/p>\n

That is the question Ctrl<\/em> sets out to explore. But Derek Webb doesn\u2019t address the hotly-debated topic in a set of direct statements like he might have in a previous album. Rather, he has a story to tell. In fact, the story behind the album goes back to earlier this year, when a mysterious project called SOLA-MI surfaced across the web.<\/p>\n

Although it was touted as the official soundtrack for a movie called Nexus<\/em>, this supposed film didn\u2019t seem to exist in much of any capacity. Mysterious coffee shop postings and a trail of Twitter hints eventually led to the release of a free album from SOLA-MI \u2014 an electronic indie pop album that fits sonically somewhere between Janelle Monae and Sufjan Stevens.<\/p>\n

SOLA-MI dives into the existential crisis of an artificial intelligence on the verge of human consciousness. In \u201cMother, Mother\u201d, vocalist Latifah Philips takes the embodies the voice of the machine:<\/p>\n

How do you dig yourself out from the grave
\nWith no hands and no face and no name?
\nHow do you really know what you really know
\nIf you don\u2019t really know how you know it?
\nIs it faith or is it computation?
\nTransistors exploding<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cmother\u201d, this machine\u2019s creator, is referred to often throughout the album \u2014 a transcendent metaphor on the relation between creation and creator.<\/p>\n

In the album\u2019s final song, \u201cSilver Grizzly\u201d, we find our synthetic heroine begging her mother for real life as her beeping heartbeat fades into a flatline. But who is this mysterious artificial intelligence and where did she come from?<\/p>\n