Poet, musician, and activist Patti Smith has been awarded the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts. At 79 years old, the author of Horses is considered a total creator and a rock myth. Her work stands out for its strong social commitment, where art acts as a tool for denunciation and healing in the face of the injustices of the contemporary world.
Analog sound as digital resistance 🎸
In an era dominated by algorithmic music production and streaming, Smith has maintained a firm stance for analog authenticity. Her creative process prioritizes tape recording and manual editing, rejecting autotune and prefabricated loops. This methodology, though slower and more costly, generates a sonic texture impossible to replicate with plugins. For audio developers, analyzing her records is like studying how human imperfection creates a unique digital fingerprint against the sterile precision of AI.
The day Patti Smith tried a modern synthesizer 🤖
They say someone gave her a state-of-the-art synthesizer with a thousand presets. She turned it on, listened to preset 437 (a dubstep glitch), turned it off, and said: This sounds like a broken elevator on the Moon. Right after, she grabbed her 1975 acoustic guitar, purposely detuned a string, and recorded a three-minute anthem. The synthesizer, since then, serves as a paperweight in her studio. Ironies of technology: sometimes, the most advanced thing is what we need the least.