Netty Neal on the AI career behind Faceless Design Collective
Faceless Design Collective creator Netty Neal reveals how her work in AI strategy and governance connects with her music, novels and 2084: UNOBSERVED universe
The creator behind Faceless Design Collective has an unusual combination of creative and professional worlds. Alongside producing electronic music and writing fiction, Netty Neal works professionally in AI product strategy and explores some of the biggest questions surrounding how increasingly capable technology will affect people.
Artificial intelligence is therefore much more than a production tool Netty discovered through music. Her professional life includes AI strategy, technology and digital transformation, while her academic work explores governance, regulation and the relationship between humans and increasingly autonomous systems.
Speaking exclusively to SoapLandTV, Netty explained:
“I work professionally in AI product strategy, and I also run a digital consultancy supporting organisations with AI, product, technology and digital transformation.”
That experience provides an interesting backdrop to Faceless Design Collective. FDC openly experiments with AI-assisted creative tools, but the questions surrounding the technology also feed into Netty’s writing and wider storytelling.
Her novel 2084 explores artificial intelligence, humanity and a digitally governed future. That idea is now expanding through 2084: UNOBSERVED, a connected creative universe intended to develop across a series of novels, television and eventually film, with music and visual storytelling forming part of the same wider world.
Netty is also engaging with AI governance, publishing and media communities across the UK, US and Canada as she develops those ambitions. It means the fictional future explored through 2084 sits alongside professional conversations she is already having about technology in the real world.
The different sides of her work become increasingly connected as the projects grow. Music can explore love, attraction, loss and identity, while fiction can take on larger questions around data, autonomy and digitally governed societies.
Netty described the connection directly:
“So the music, 2084, #UNOBSERVED and Faceless Design Collective aren’t entirely separate from my professional world. They’re different ways of exploring the same enormous question.”
That question is what it means to remain human as machines become increasingly capable of imitating us. Rather than approaching it from one perspective, Netty is exploring it through research, professional work, novels, music and the wider FDC universe.
It also explains why she is comfortable being open about AI-assisted creativity. The technology is something she works with professionally as well as creatively, giving her the opportunity to explore what it can make possible while also considering the responsibility involved in shaping increasingly capable systems.
Despite the scale of those subjects, Netty does not take herself too seriously when describing the unusual mixture of work and creativity.
“Basically, I’m a fairly substantial nerd who somehow makes half-decent music as a by-product of the wider AI investigation.”
SoaplandTV will happily disagree with Netty on the “half-decent” part. Faceless Design Collective has already built a distinctive sound, a growing audience and a creative world with far more ambition behind it than that modest description suggests, and there is clearly much more still to come.
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Image: Netty Neal / Faceless Design Collective
