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

[alex]

On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 21:42 +0200, Pierre Proske wrote:
> I'm still reluctant to agree with the statement that "constantly 
> changing generative music" is flawed. Minimalism, whether
> generative or not, has always relied on very minimal, but constant 
> change. Evolutionary and complex systems also
> often display surprising behaviours which cannot be easily dismissed as 
> facile, and they too constantly change. Perhaps I'm
> straying outside of conventional music though.

Sure, but it was actually everlasting constantly changing music I was
talking about, and which Paul is referring to as "pure" generative
music.

> Perhaps this is a difference of perspectives, but to me the author of a 
> piece of "music" software produces a tool,
> as a smithy produces a hammer for a carpenter. Withough real creative 
> input, that tool is useless. I can choose which
> tools to use, and I set aside those I do not want. Is Max/Msp not a tool?

You could see it as a toolbox, although it might be more proper to call
it a language, or an environment.

> Of course, if the tool develops an element of autonomy, as opposed to 
> randomness, such that the control is wrested unwillingly away from the 
> artist, this becomes a little more dicey...

Yes, and this is exactly what generative music does.  Except it isn't
wrestled away from the artist!  The artist is merely choosing a starting
point provided by another artist...  A collaboration.

I think this copyright issue boils down to one camp believing generative
music to be encoded in the software, and therefore licenceable and
copyrightable as music, and another camp believing generative music is
authorless, conjured up from nowhere.

I view the latter view, promoted by Brian Eno, to be false, offensive to
the artists who make generative software.  It falsely places a dumb
end-user at the centre of the creative process, resulting in bizarre
conclusions.  I believe this view that unrecorded generative music is
uncopyrightable as music is one of these bizarre conclusions.

Maybe this article is useful here:
  http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/10/3/20856/7891


alex