[eu-gene] Psst...Wanna Buy an Algorithm? (Working Title)

[n++k]

>> But I think I'd
>> still say there is a lot of healthy mileage in algorithmic music (even
>> without any external interaction) that I prefer to recorded works, 
>> they
>> are like 'live recordings', if only that term wasn't already
>> appropriated...
>
> But isn't algorithmic music without any external interaction equivalent
> to a recording?  Since each time you run it, it produces exactly the
> same music?
>

If we take an algorithmic composition delivered in an executable, it is 
a bit like having
a black box with a red button on top_ The box contains performers which 
have comprehended
and trained for a composition and were just about to play it when they 
were frozen at zero degree
Kelvin_ ++

With the red button one can instantly and perfectly clone those 
performers from the originals
at room temperature, then kill them at the end of the composition_

Maybe we will get the same sounds, maybe not

It appears to me anyway that all composed music is algorithmic: as soon 
as there is a
(formalized or not) partition, and performers to read and interpret 
them, it is a form of
algorithmic composition_ Western partitions have loops, state updates, 
contemporary
ones introduced many new elements_ The algorithms are of course 
different in nature,
  because we cannot ask a lot of computational power from human 
performers, but the
nature of composed music is not so different_

If the executable format was a mechanical device, incapable of taking 
recordings of
itself, even though it may play it again perfectly, we would take 
recordings out of it,
and would not call the device itself the recording_

++
Random elements and seeds in the algorithm only change the wallpaper 
and initial state of the performers atoms_
Usually when we talk about interaction, thoughts of game like 
interfaces appear, or images of computer user-interfaces_ But artistic 
performance usually lead to more subtle interactions_ Maybe performers 
will want to take the original composition and re-do it in an obsolete 
or exotic style, maybe they will have instinctively found new 
structures and significations in a work and this leads them to play it 
differently: what interaction is contained here, how to model it, and 
why do it, there is key, the challenge of generative music_