My new latest single – ‘Turing Test’ – released on October 31st, 2024.
New music video coming soon!
About the song
‘Turing Test’ is a reminder and an invitation to embrace that being alive and being human is a miracle. Part of being human is having access to the cosmos. There’s the opportunity for transcendence available to us in relationship to the cosmos and we don’t take it. In the song, the first thing this artificially intelligent machine does when it has access to these super powers is it wants to consume the cosmos. It’s this pure joy that the machine experiences about consuming the cosmos; it’s experiencing the ecstasy of existence What does this tell us about what’s available to us as humans and that we don’t grasp and realize in and for ourselves?
I ate a whole bowl of stars
They lit me up
Felt so good going down
I ate a while bowl of stars
Sonically, the song is sweet, meditative, sexy and ethereal with an undercurrent of grit, tension and menace. It’s Bruce Springsteen meets the Cocteau Twins meets William Gibson.
The song touches on a number of themes – identity, longing for something you don’t have and the lure of technology and creation and the potential dangers of such. In the song, the AI character wants so much to be free and have it’s own identity. It’s celebrating it’s uniqueness and the power of it’s existence without thinking about the impact it may have. At the same time, it’s eating a bowl of stars – a metaphor for devouring the universe and it’s potential to do damage to the universe as we know it.
‘Turing Test’ was written and recorded in the studio in June 2024. I was in Vancouver’s The Warehouse Studio with my band for a weekend in June recording a new EP. Things were going so well, I wanted to write more songs. Matty Presidente (who plays piano and keys on the new songs) challenged me to write a new song on the Saturday night between sessions. So, I made it back to my friend’s place around 10:30pm where I was staying after seeing a friend’s band perform live at the Princeton, and wrote the first verse and chorus to ‘Turing Test.’ Less than 12 hours later, I was back in the studio finishing the song and recording it with my band. Everyone got into a magical groove…It was pure joy!
What is a Turing Test?
The Turing Test, proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in 1950, is a way to assess a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human. If a human evaluator can’t reliably tell whether they’re interacting with a machine or a human in a text-based conversation, the machine “passes” the test. It’s a classic benchmark in AI, testing if a computer can mimic human responses well enough to fool people.
Alan Turing also wanted to be free. He was a gay man living in a time when being homosexual was illegal in the UK. He was punished and persecuted by the state for being who he was. So, the song also touches on the imagined pain and longing of Alan Turing to live out his life in peace and embrace his identity as a queer man.
More About Alan Turing
Alan Turing was a pioneering British mathematician and logician, widely considered the father of modern computing and artificial intelligence. Born in 1912, he played a crucial role during World War II by developing techniques to break the German Enigma code, significantly aiding the Allied war effort. After the war, Turing’s theoretical work laid the foundation for computer science, particularly with his concept of a “universal machine,” which later became known as the Turing Machine, an abstract model for computers.
Tragically, Turing’s life was cut short in 1954 after he was persecuted for his homosexuality, a criminal offense in Britain at the time. He was posthumously pardoned in 2013 and remains an iconic figure for both his scientific achievements and his personal legacy as a champion for LGBTQ+ rights.
I am grateful for the support of CreativeBC and the Province of British Columbia.
Words and music by Kele Fleming
Recorded at The Warehouse Studio June 1, 2024
Engineered by Sheldon Zaharko, Zed Productions
Assistant Engineer Annie Kennedy
Runner Alex Walters
Mastered by Andrew Downton, Railtown Mastering
Kele Fleming – Vocals, acoustic and electric guitars
Tony Lee – Drums and percussion
Scott Fletcher – Bass guitar, mandolin
Jonathan Blokmanis – Electric guitar
Matthew Presidente – Piano and keys
Single cover – Kele Fleming