[Smt-talk] Aesthetics of Computer-Generated Music

[Eliot Handelman]

On 18/04/2011 3:05 PM, Stephen Jablonsky wrote:
>
> What, then, is the difference between competent music and great music? 
> For me, it is what I call inspired improbabilities––those musical 
> events that simultaneously surprise and delight us. They always come 
> at just the right moment when the piece needs that special something 
> to keep the listener fully engaged and continuously amazed. [...] in 
> ways the rational mind cannot begin to fathom.

Stephen,

your terminology is reminiscent of Robert E Mueller's "The science of 
art" from 1967, about the future of computer art,
criticizing such art then current as being too low entropy, calling for 
greater "improbabilities."  In the picture of music
I get from your account,  music is somehow modeling the arousal of the 
listener, predicting patterns of attention.
  Perhaps you are not as far away from computational thinking as you 
seem to be claiming.

Coincidentally, an article currently in the NYT does skirt around some 
of these matters:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19brain.html

best wishes,

-- eliot

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CIRMMT
www.computingmusic.com