Perfume perform “The Light” for the first time, with some ugly AI art

Perfume gave a debut performance of “The Light” for their Code of Perfume (or COD3 OF P3RFUM3 if we wanna be proper) gig in Hong Kong, as everybody knew they would. It was pretty much the reason why they threw the song so quickly a mere week before the Hong Kong show—so fans could get acquainted with it beforehand. And it’s really unfortunate that Perfume chose to debut a performance of a good, crowd rousing song with generative AI art which overshadowed everything happening on the stage.

The AI art was extremely distracting—between how much it had going on, and that it was so clearly generative AI art. And I would genuinely like to know the reasoning behind this choice. Especially when Perfume have such a creative team behind them who easily could have produced something better than this. Even if there was a time constraint—bitch, just have some pink triangles falling down the screens.

Perfume have always been about technology in their performances. They work closely with Daito Manabe, founder of the Rhizomatiks, who has more than likely used AI for some of the stuff he’s done for Perfume over the years. Manabe even did an interview with Design Boom in 2023 where they discussed generative AI art and the ethics of it. So Rhizomatiks are not anti AI. But for Perfume to just flat out have generative AI art in one of their performances? I never thought I’d see the day.

Stans may defend the use of generative AI art and say ‘But the lyrics mention driving and shiny buildings’. And to that I would still say that using generative AI art was lazy, unnecessary and that the shit still looks ugly and distracting. Somebody really just prompted ‘pink, car vaporwave, 80s’, exported and called it day.

Lazy.

Perfume - The Light | Image: DoYouLoveJam

I get why on paper Perfume’s team would do something like this, because it fits in with the creative technology angle that Perfume’s performances have been known for and associated with for over a decade. But it’s disappointing that a group and a team who continually set a standard for creativity in performances delivered something which was so void of creativity.

For all of the wireframes, coding languages, robot girl narratives and crazy technological shit Perfume do for some of their live shows, there is always a clear sense that a team of really talented people are behind it all. And that was completely lost with the use of these generative AI visuals.

The visuals didn’t even make sense with the damn song. I could kinda understand if these AI art visuals were used for something like “Polygon Wave” or “Android&”. But for “The Light”!?

No.

Perfume’s team is too talented and too creative for lazy, slapdash shit like this. This shit was Stark. Game of Thrones.

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