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

[alex]

On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 16:01 +0100, Paul Brown wrote:
> >And I suggest that the system is the music.
> 
> Ok then we will have to agree to differ.

Well, it's good to have drawn the line!  Perhaps you could clarify your
position with some examples.

1/ Is this music?
  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/Lilypond-screenshot-adeste.png

2/ Sheet music already allows looping structures (repeat), and sub
routines (choruses), if you added another simple branching construct,
the if statement to a piece of sheet music, would it cease to be music
at that point?
  Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of experimental music can
provide an example.

3/ Is this music?
  http://www.stockhausen.org/page_1-_STOP_START.jpg

4/ Could a piece of mp4-structured audio be music?
  http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/sa/

5/ If you wrote a program that compressed a recording into mp4-sa, would
the resulting mp4-sa file be music?

> >The separation between software and the music it creates is an illusion
> >that is shattered when we watch a livecoder at work.
> 
> Personally, I do not consider livecoding a generative process. The
> composer/livecoder is too involved in the creation process of the music.

How you define the term generative does not affect my charge that the
separation between software and the music the software creates is
illusionary.

> I am not saying, and have not said, that the system should be closed. In
> fact I believe it is essential for the system to be open so that external
> factors and their fluctuations can influence the creation of the music
> within the system.

Fair enough, and I do consider this an interesting area.

So you would not say that this is music reacting to its environment, but
a system reacting to its environment in order to create music?

> If I have, and I doubt it, misinterpreted the term "dumb end users", which
> to me implies that you think that audience who listen to the music produced
> is either incapable of communicating with you, is merely a passive receptor
> of the music or simply stupid, I apologise and ask you to clarify your use
> of the term.

My original statement: "I view the latter view [that generative music is
authorless], 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."

In this case the end user is dumb where they believe they are central to
the creative process when they are not.

As I said, I don't like software that creates the role of a dumb end
user.  That is, software that flatters a user into thinking they are
being creative when they are not.

Listeners are certainly not dumb end users, they are involved in their
own internal creative process through active listening, but that is a
side issue.  I am not talking about them as listeners, I'm talking about
them as users of software.

>  By "in some way" I was simply suggesting that the end user
> could play both a proactive and, seemingly to them, a passive role in the
> creation of the music. Creating an environment for them to explore my own
> music is definitely and most certainly not on my agenda. 

Fair enough.


alex