Did I just listen to an unconscious performance of music?
When Sibelius or similar score producing software plays back
the music written into it that is precisely what you have, an unconscious
performance. If the quantity of information placed on the score is minimal the execution
of the music will be insipid. As the score becomes more detailed, choices of
instruments, dynamics, tempi, articulations and the like, the music gradually
becomes more “lifelike”. Exchange the stock instruments for better samples and
export the music into a DAW that can make increasingly fine adjustments to the
tempos, fluctuations in dynamics and gradually the music takes on the character
of a humanised performance.
The gap between information and intelligence has gradually
been closed during these actions and it is not difficult to conceive that a commercially
available score writer will be available where the additional refinements
mentioned will be an add-on. For certain types of music the level of
predictability will be high, others less so, some composers will find the
suggestions useful and others will disable particular features and impose their
wants and needs. When the software you own behaves this way the programming can
be described as intelligent. As the contest between the software and the human
is played out we have intelligence verses consciousness.
We all have experience of intelligence and consciousness, if
asked to define them we would probably say that intelligence comes in various
flavours and fluctuates in its effective use. We would probably struggle more
with defining consciousness perhaps suggesting awareness, sensation, emotional
responses, love and hate and so on. Holding onto these assumptions we can
immediately distinguish between a machine and a human performance of music. Our
super score writer cannot sense emotional responses, but it can imitate them.
If it can imitate can we empathise with the result? If the answer is yes then
the blurring between intelligence and consciousness has started.
Some argue that where there is processing there is
consciousness, in the machine world there are various degrees of information
integration, so there are various levels of machine consciousness. With the
attention to brain scanning to locate functions and responses we increasingly
accept the notion that our behaviours are machine driven, the argument being
that our brain is a very complicated machine and our best computers are lacking
in the flexibility of the biological construct. If we listen to machine
composed music we might agree that the processing of information to produce
chord sequences that match Bach’s progressions are similar and that the results
are convincing but lacklustre, something is missing. In the old days we might
have said it lacks a vital spark, perhaps now we would say that the Bach
imitation requires further information.
Let us change the focus a little and consider the processes
that we have engaged in to become performers or composers or attentive
listeners. A musician has spent many years refining knowledge of the systems of
music making and applying it to reproduce, alter, create or recreate various
aspects to communicate with others. This person has embraced all the states of
learning, transforming learning into a process, grounding the process in
experience, applying that experience in the real world, creating and sharing
knowledge with others. Integrated into
the learning are real life experiences, observations, formation of ideas,
opinions and attitudes and experimentation based within and outside the rules
of the system. The consciousness of that musician involves competence within
the system and a process of transformation when applying the competence. This
transformation is not static, it alters moment by moment, and part of that
transformation relates to others, it is a social interaction.
If we now alter the paragraph by substituting musician with
software and person with product the method works up to the point where
experimentation based within and outside
the rules of the system is reached and the process of transformation takes
place.
To respond to the question posed in the title my personal
view is that we need to reassess our concept of consciousness and be willing to
adapt to the idea that the scope of the term performance will need to be
widened. In terms of composing musicians should be in a musical win-win
situation, we listen, we engage, we reproduce, we innovate.
To stimulate the brain cells here are two examples of
computer generated music in different styles.
No comments:
Post a Comment