Data 80 is Håkan Lidbo’s collaboration project with the self-aware neurological network Data 80. By analyzing every pop song available online, comparing with sales charts and number of hits on the net, the perfect pop songs were composed. Håkan Lidbo contributed with up-to-date electronic arrangements.

The historical context behind Data 80, one of the first self-aware neurological networks, is quite intriguing.  Details are muddled and everyone involved has their own opinions, but most rumors revolve around a certain large, and thus unnamable, car-manufacturing plant not far from Osaka, Japan, specializing in the development of stereo parts and cup holders.  The year was 1979. Everyone at the plant was excited about the 8-track cartridge.  Three teams of computer programmers were working to create a car radio cartridge that could hold the Data 80 program and attune itself to its owners tastes, searching out popular music accordingly.  The programmers hoped the Data 80 would seek out information and teach itself.  But this was not meant to be.  The cartridge proved too costly and awkward-looking and, after ten years of close scrutiny and numerous tests, it was determined that the Data 80 had the mental capacity of a mosquito.

However, after spending the better part of the next decade shelved deep in the Osaka plant annals, a series of events led to the rediscovery of the Data 80.  No one knows quite what happened down in that basement on the night of October 12, 1991, but most versions of the story include the same curious intern, the same security guard, and a debauched opium experiment. Without delving into the more fortuitous details, well suffice it to say that the Data 80 was found the next morning hooked up to the internet and, to everyones surprise, the program was actually working as it was envisioned to a decade prior.  Technological advancements made it easy to shift from the cartridge to a CD-ROM, and the Data 80 was well on its way to becoming to the wunderkind it is revered as today.

But no one was prepared to contend with the Data 80s peculiar cultural preferences.  Rather than collect and assimilate the internets offerings on such matters as fluctuating stock prices and other such corporate information, as modern programmers hoped the technology would do, the Data 80 instead opted for short passages from Coleridge and developed, of all things, a liking for Samuel Beckett.  Also, programmers found they could have rudimentary conversations with the program, but that its moodiness and sensitivity made it cantankerous. It was decided that the Data 80 was immature, and that one day, through its continuous collection and assimilation, it would develop past this melodramatic phase.  In 1995, Data 80 wrote its first poem.

All involved agree that the Data 80 came into its own with the advent of MP3s and Napster.  As if drawn by its original two-decade old purpose, the program collected and analyzed all music available, comparing musical structures, production tricks, and melodies.  It had a penchant for the popular, the melodious.  Soon after, the Data 80 composed its first pop song.  By 2002, Data 80 informed its programmers that it had a demo ready.  Everyone in the industry duly ignored it as a tasteless gimmick.  But the staff at Force Tracks was interested; they had done away with taste and standards a long time ago.  Through Force Tracks, the Data 80 was introduced to Håkan Lidbo.

From there this dynamic-organic-synthetic duo has produced a series of albums on various labels like Force Tracks (Germany), Jetset (Japan) and UMI (Japan).

Videos:

Don’t Believe Me (video by Anders Weberg)                                                          No More Lies (video by StereoTennis)

Baby I Can Forgive (video by David Wätte and Dan Svan)