Artist Michael Gresalfi‘s original lyrics and AI instructions produce a 1940s cabaret-style saxophone blues that asks us to consider the environmental impacts of our food production and consumption. Accompanied by Michael’s ‘Cow’ painting, ‘Drop the Beef’ highlights how practising intensive animal farming on a massive scale produces a significant amount of the greenhouse gas methane.
To me, this is one clear example of how such AI-generated software can be used by artists and writers in an interesting manner. Those of us engaged in the ‘climate culture’ might also find these emerging AI generative capabilities of some good use — while still remaining cautious and concerned as we find AI intertwined in all aspects of our personal and community environments.
Michael Gresalfi is an artist who seeks to incorporate art with climate change data, and whose work in encaustic medium, glass paint, oils and acrylics includes ‘Our Changing Planet’.
I wrote the lyrics to ‘Drop the Beef’ — original title, ‘Methane Blues’ — and also provided liner notes for adding both the music and the vocalist (such as: slow tempo – saxophone – 1940s cabaret style – blues – female sultry singer) and my friend Chuck ran these inputs through his paid subscription of software named Suno.
To me, this is one clear example of how such AI-generated software can be used by artists and writers in an interesting manner. Those of us engaged in the ‘climate culture’ might also find these emerging AI generative capabilities of some good use — while still remaining cautious and concerned as we find AI intertwined in all aspects of our personal and community environments.
Accompanying the song, the amusing painting — simply named ‘Cow’ — is a quizzical portrait of the animal’s face, seeming to ask you to consider the environmental impacts of our food production processes. I don’t mean to imply that raising animals on traditional, family-owned, small-scale and sustainably operated farms is an issue. Rather, it is the huge multinational firms practicing intensive animal farming on a massive scale that are producing a significant amount of the methane gas proven to increase global warming.
Cattle are the number one agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Each year, a single cow will belch about 220 pounds of methane. Methane from cattle is shorter-lived than carbon dioxide but 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere. Globally, cows and other livestock animals are responsible for about 40 per cent of methane emissions — a potent greenhouse gas. In digesting their high fiber diet, cows emit methane as a byproduct, making them one of the least climate-friendly sources of food on the planet.
This post from CLEAR Center (Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research at University of California Davis) explains Why methane from cattle warms the climate differently than CO2 from fossil fuels.
You can find more of Michael’s work at his Michael Gresalfi Art. And in our archive, you can find his previous Creative Showcase pieces for ClimateCultures: Invasive Flower, Mother’s Lament, What Man Has Wrought, and Our Changing Planet.