When we last heard from internet troublemakers Botnik Studios, they had used their intelligent bots to autogenerate a Harry Potter novel called Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like A Large Pile of Ash. It was gorgeously surreal, containing sentences such as: “The pig of of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: ‘You are Hagrid now.'”
Botnik have now turned their attention to auto-generating band names for an imaginary Coachella line-up, and the result is similarly beautiful. In place of 2018’s headliners The Weeknd, Beyoncé and Eminem, we have Fanch, One of Pig and Lil Hack. Lower down the bill? Glothongz, Jacked Like A Man, Dinotot Killers, Billions of Mario and of course, Big Big Sting. It’s weirdly credible – there’s even an artist called Giraffics, which doesn’t sound like a far cry from real-life producer Giraffage.
Announcing your 2018 COACHELLA LINEUP, generated by a neural network trained on thousands of band names: https://t.co/EskuBWOdfy pic.twitter.com/J06jgc3x2R
— Botnik Studios (@botnikstudios) January 23, 2018
Twitter users are already excited for the imaginary festival, particularly for the rare appearance by the legendary Billions of Mario.
The first time I saw them was a tech demo pic.twitter.com/1wEaPsKYoS
— Jacksgiving ?? (@Jackapedia_) January 23, 2018
Fanch have also got people talking.
Fanch hasn’t been the same since Bort replaced Plibs on drums
— Loaf Jouster (@noble_stabbings) January 23, 2018
While everyone’s focussing on the music, let’s not forget the large-scale art installations that are on show, from Ed the Bjown, Melon Soxprane and Aunt Luke. Exciting stuff indeed.