David Cope & artificial creativity

[uncloned]

an article about David Cope.

I believe I had a few email long discussion with him in the mid 90's which was interesting.

http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507/

"So Cope developed his own types of musical phenomena to capture each composer's tendencies — for instance, how often a series of notes shows up, or how a series may signal a change in key. He also classified chords, phrases and entire sections of a piece based on his own grammar of musical storytelling and tension and release: statement, preparation, extension, antecedent, consequent."

In the article there are two mp3's for download. Please listen before answering the poll.

[Louigi Verona]

It does. What I heard was definitely music. It did not evoke any emotional response though.

In his view, all music — and, really, any creative pursuit — is largely based on previously created works. Call it standing on the shoulders of giants; call it plagiarism. Everything we create is just a product of recombination.

While I see it differently, that statement and belief is on the border of saying what is life - just biological processes or something more that that? What is music - a combination of notes and sound waves or something more than that?

Emmy music is recombination. So what you hear is actually not Emmy, but Bach. Imitating Bach. Remembering Bach. Recombining Bach. If Emmy creates something stunning - it is like a photo of Bach - and what matters is Bach, not the photo camera.

This is what I think.

[uncloned]

I pretty much agree with you LV.

Emily Howell would be much more impressive if the program created truly new music - here, doing Bach, the program does have rules (hundreds of years old)  to follow or break. So I question "creativity". As you said, it is recombination.

[Sam_Zen]

I voted yes, but with some restriction.
These are organized notes, so strictly spoken it is music.
But it is dreadful music..! I wasn't able to listen up to the end of demo 2.
If this is all he can produce with his famous 'intelligent' software, well, shame on him.

The question, whether something is music or not, is rather trivial, because it depends on the perspective.
The perspective of the listener and the perspective of the composer.
When confronted with new or exotic developments, common listeners often have reacted first with "this is not music".
So it's more useful to focus on the role of the composer.

A composer may have the pretention to make a 'musical' composition.
Having that pretention while inputting data into a machine, and wait for the rendered audible result, is very questionable.
This situation doesn't differ much, by the way, with Bach writing the data on a paper score, and an orchestra rendering it into sound.

To escape from this situation, I think it's better to add another kind of composition next to 'musical' : a 'technical composition'.
The intention of the work is not to produce a 'musical' output, but to compose the conditions that result in (maybe) a 'musical' output.

[Louigi Verona]

If this is all he can produce with his famous 'intelligent' software, well, shame on him.

I think he has achieved very good results and can be congratulated. His work is very interesting anyway.

However, once again, he uses the premise that people do not really create - basically he says that people lack any creativity, but rather possess complex recombination skills.

This is not a new view. In fact, it is closely related to whether one has a spirit or are people just biological entities with all their thoughts and feelings just being chemical reactions in the brain. A fundamental question.

Because David Cope basically chose the "uncreative people" view, his work is the celebration of this principle.

[TheEagle]

After listening I can say that this is definitely music. And I think it's not that bad. I heard pieces that were even worse than those two demos.

Maybe the "language-barrier" strikes again, but I really don't understand the question. Why this should be no music? Just because it's done by an AI that's following some basic rules of imitating, recombining or whatever?

[Louigi Verona]

I've been thinking about this and thought of a way to show that recombination as a skill still has got to have something more than just recombination in itself.

If all people do is recombine things they see around themselves, how come we have good and bad music? Obviously, some have much better skill or talent for recombination than others. If this is so, then obviously there would be people who have a superior recombination skill. So superior, in fact, that, like Bach, they would deliver genius pieces, pieces, which are so sophisticated that they themselves become the building blocks of other recombinations, not mentioning the emotional impact. Obviously, this stops being mere recombination. Recombination at such a high level is more a creation, art in itself and obviously more than just recombination.