(2025)
Anti Alias as a system for writing, imaging, and staging music.
An identity framework expressed through sound, print,
installation, and deliberate human–AI iteration.
Concept
For Promotional Use Only is a songwriting experiment translated into a physical listening system.
Under the name Anti Alias, I wrote a series of songs over several years and used AI tools to create alternate versions: new arrangements, genres, and mixes built from the same core ideas. The project asks what happens when one body of work branches into many forms, and how listeners respond when those branches are treated as tangible objects rather than invisible files.
The system lives primarily in the real world: posters, cassette tapes, a catalog, a vending machine, and a tap-to-listen wall. AI is present as a tool inside the process, not as the subject of the work. Visitors encounter the songs first as physical media; only then do they discover how they were made.
System Overview
The project runs across two installations:
Synthtember –
a small art-and-technology exhibition organized around the theme Deviations. I used this show to prototype the core system: unreleased Anti Alias songs, each iterated through rapid human–AI collaboration and presented as cassette tapes with matching posters.
FP3 Gallery, Boston
– a later installation that expanded the same framework into a full listening room. The space included a long bench, a printed catalog, a vending machine, and a wall of posters and tapes that visitors could activate with their own phones.
Both installations were linked to a custom website that mirrors the gallery wall: swipable posters, animated when selected, each leading to a dedicated page where visitors could play Side A / Side B versions of a track.
Songs and Cassettes
Each track begins as a handwritten song – usually a voice memo or demo – then moves through short, iterative runs with AI tools. The final versions are recorded to physical cassette tapes with custom J-cards. The back of each J-card includes handwritten prompts and notes from the AI runs, making the process visible without foregrounding it.
Components
Poster accompanying cassette for i want this
Posters & Web Animation
Every tape has a corresponding poster. On the wall and on the website, the posters function as the primary visual entry point. In the gallery, they are static prints. Online, the same images animate when a visitor pauses on them, then lead to a page where the cassette box shrinks into an interactive tape with Side A / Side B toggles and a play/pause button.
Catalogs on bench
Catalog
A square, full-color catalog sits on the bench. It reads like a cross between liner notes and a product catalog: each spread shows the tape, its poster, a way to access the track, and the handwritten prompt notes. QR codes in the catalog provide a second way into the same listening pages.
Vending Machine (FP3)
At FP3, a modified vending machine dispensed trading cards and stickers related to the project. Each item carried a small QR code linking back to the listening environment. The machine provided a playful, low-stakes way to approach the work and gave visitors a physical piece to take away.
A visitor purchases a collectable card from the vending machine
Tap-to-Listen Wall
Below each poster in the FP3 installation, a small green sticker with an NFC symbol allowed visitors to tap with their phones and open the track on their own device. A larger wall-mounted QR code linked to the full poster index. Instructions were printed on cassette J-cards mounted to the wall and repeated in the catalog.
This redundancy was intentional. It created multiple entrances into the same system and made it easy for visitors to move between seeing, tapping, and listening without needing a guided tour.
Tapping the phone to the NFC sticker pulls up the website, no app needed
In Practice
The FP3 installation was designed as a quiet listening room rather than a performance space. A long bench ran the length of the posters, and visitors were encouraged to sit, scan, and stay with the work. The only sound in the space came through their own headphones.
Many people who initially described themselves as “not into AI” still interacted with the system once they were drawn in by the posters, tapes, and vending machine. The novelty of tapping a wall, pulling a card from the machine, or scanning the catalog created a small pause where expectations could loosen; inside that pause, the work was heard on its own terms.
Analytics from the tap targets and listening pages confirmed what I observed in the room: clusters of attention around certain posters, repeat visits to the same tracks, and multi-minute listening sessions that matched the time people spent on the bench. Visitors didn’t skim. They stayed; they scrolled; they returned. 150 people generated more than 300 sessions and hundreds of deep-engagement events.
The data is not the focus of the project, but it gives me a concrete record of how people moved through the system.
Gallery visitor inspects a poster
Significance
For Promotional Use Only explores how format and environment can shape the way AI-assisted work is received. The project deliberately separates process from presentation: the structure foregrounds my songwriting and the physical media while allowing the AI component to surface slowly, through prompts, labels, and conversation.
The installations create a small counterpoint to the usual experience of AI online. Instead of endless, disposable output, visitors encounter a finite set of tracks fixed onto physical tapes and arranged in a deliberate room. Listening requires effort – walking up to the wall, tapping, sitting down – and that effort appears to increase attention rather than shorten it.
This project connects directly to my broader questions about:
how human and machine systems coauthor media
how physical formats can mediate anxious topics like AI
how designed environments can open a more nuanced, less polarized space for reflection
It also links back to Symbiosis and Joe Is Dead through its use of print, digital interaction, and structured choice as core narrative tools.
Selected Works / Credits
Songwriting and vocal performance
Music production and AI-assisted iteration
Visual identity and branding
Poster and booklet design
Cassette design and handwritten prompt integration
Exhibition design (Synthtember; FP3)
Website and interaction design
Video loops and animated posters
NFC and QR implementation
Photography: ROCKET (where applicable)
Concept, songwriting, visual design, web design, and installation: Danny Rosenberg / Anti Alias
Exhibitions: Synthtember group show and FP3 Gallery (Boston)
Installation help by
Synthember: new alliancae gallery