Hello,

Read the following article:
http://qz.com/689887/google-is-laun...ct-to-see-if-computers-can-be-truly-creative/

Bertus

 

Seems to me they are asking the wrong question about being creative with music. The heart of music is the emotional response of the listener to the expression of human existence via music. Even if the 'music' sounded great by pure function I think we would judge it to be a lifeless mix of trained tones by a good technician instead of being truly creative or artistic.

 

Seems to me they are asking the wrong question about being creative with music. The heart of music is the emotional response of the listener to the expression of human existence via music. Even if the 'music' sounded great by pure function I think we would judge it to be a lifeless mix of trained tones by a good technician instead of being truly creative or artistic.

Unless the machine understands that some degree of randomness or unexpected progressions or volume changes make the emotional click, the connection of man to the struggles of a machine being a machine.

It will be the musical equivalent to my car, Bess, not being able to start on some cold Minnesota mornings and her ability to say, "I tried but, I'm sorry. I just can't do it today". Some machines can communicate and make an emotional connection. Now, whether or not they are being creative and only faking it so they don't have to start on a cold morning, I don't think so.

 

I see it all as an elaborate game of pretending to care about machines as things other than tools. The emotional feelings for that old car are IMO from the association of memories with human life events that happened while using ,being in or at places the car allowed you to be. If those were overall positive then it's a great car even if you had to change the oil every week, if they were mainly negative due to that car then it's a rattle trap for trouble.

 

I see it all as an elaborate game of pretending to care about machines as things other than tools. The emotional feelings for that old car are IMO from the association of memories with human life events that happened while using ,being in or at places the car allowed you to be. If those were overall positive then it's a great car even if you had to change the oil every week, if they were mainly negative due to that car then it's a rattle trap for trouble.

Change oil? It didn't stay in the car long enough to wear out.

 

Change oil? It didn't stay in the car long enough to wear out.

I've had a few with the total loss oil filtration system. Fill er up with fresh gas and oil.

 

http://www.gizmag.com/creative-artificial-intelligence-computer-algorithmic-music/35764/

There are some samples of computer generated music. I find music to be essential form of human expression. Elevator music is not it

 

http://www.gizmag.com/creative-artificial-intelligence-computer-algorithmic-music/35764/

There are some samples of computer generated music. I find music to be essential form of human expression. Elevator music is not it

I agree with this article on computer generated music.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jul/01/iamus-hello-world-review

To me, it's precisely the musical "genomes", the backbone of the way Iamus programs and produces its pieces, that are the problem. It sounds like it's slavishly manipulating pitch cells to generate melodies that have a kind ofsuperficial coherence and relationship to one another, with all the dryness and greyness that suggests, despite the expressive commitment of the three performers. But the material of Hello World! (there's no equivalent of the humorous exclamation mark in the music, more's the pity) is so unmemorable, and the way it's elaborated so workaday, that the piece leaves no distinctive impression.

I listen to a huge amount of ambient music that's very computer based in melody and theme. The creative artist is just not something you can program in a algorithmic fashion. One type of true music creativity is taking the minimal and making it as large as the universe.

 

..............taking the minimal and making it as large as the universe........

It sounds like what I imagine Vogon poetry would sound like. Luckily I didn't have to gnaw my leg off to keep from dying. (For the uninitiated: See Hitchhikers guide to the Universe, Vogon Poetry)

 

In the sense that a computer can be programmed to spit out a string of data which has never been generated before then yes, it can be creative. But even if the data is new, the generating principle is not.
Give enough monkeys typewriters (remember those?) and enough time and they will produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Is that creative?

 

In the sense that a computer can be programmed to spit out a string of data which has never been generated before then yes, it can be creative. But even if the data is new, the generating principle is not.
Give enough monkeys typewriters (remember those?) and enough time and they will produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Is that creative?

Given enough, enough time, they will create all works that have been completed and will be completed. You could say, meh, not creativity. However, some simple programming and a big data storage device and, poof, someone creates every combination of whole, half, quarter, eighth notes in every combination of audible tones an copyrights them all.

Now, who can be creative (or is motivated to be creative) with those handcuffs.

The basic blocks to build the program are no different than the brute-force password cracking programs.

After enough permutations are copyrighted, the owner can claim fragments of his works were used (see LEd Zeplin - stairway to heaven case in court now.

A preemptive law should be passed to prevent copyright of machine-created content.

 

The

In the sense that a computer can be programmed to spit out a string of data which has never been generated before then yes, it can be creative. But even if the data is new, the generating principle is not.
Give enough monkeys typewriters (remember those?) and enough time and they will produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Is that creative?

The actual probability in the infinite monkey theorem "is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low".

In 2003, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes crested macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon in England for a month, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website.[10]

Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five total pages[11] largely consisting of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT), said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned "an awful lot" from it. He concluded that monkeys "are not random generators. They're more complex than that. ... They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there."[10][12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem#Probabilities

These are about the same odds of the Google program actually being truly creative. That's the magic of human intelligence and life experience vs the directed randomness of some creativity program.

 

"
if computers can be truly creative"

I think the answer is surely Yes: as we have no evidence to the contrary.

The far more important question is: do we want it to be creative?

I would argue that the answer is "No" unless we can figure out how to contain, with 100% surety, a creative computer running astray.

 

The actual probability in the infinite monkey theorem "is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low".

Really. The time line has already been established, IF you believe the Darwinian theory of evolution. From monkey to the descendant named "William Shakespeare." Of course it's a theory and not a law as it has not been replicated. So withstanding the "law" requisite, it could be titled, Darwinian Religious Sect for true believers.

[sarcasm]But wait, we can "change" the scientific method replication to include, eloquently written theorems.[/sarcasm] That change like all other agreed upon standards fall in the political spectrum.

Not all politics is bad. The second went from 1/60th of a minute to a exactly 9,192,631,770 periods of the cesium atom, as agreed upon. Even that isn't perfect. If it were, there would be no leap-seconds.

 

Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five total pages[11] largely consisting of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it.

Wouldn't that pass as "installation art" these days? Very creative.

 

Installation art:

example:

The monkeys were creative ... their descendants failed to recognize it. Does that mean evolution is developmentally challenged?

 

Really. The time line has already been established, IF you believe the Darwinian theory of evolution. From monkey to the descendant named "William Shakespeare." Of course it's a theory and not a law as it has not been replicated. So withstanding the "law" requisite, it could be titled, Darwinian Religious Sect for true believers.

The thing is there's no direct evolutionary line from that monkey to a descendant named "William Shakespeare."
Humans did not evolve from modern day apes, gorillas or chimps.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/cat02.html

Will there be truly intelligent creative machines in the future, sure but the odds of those machines being developed from present logic-based pattern recognition technology is IMO pretty slim. Humans love communication in a shorthand that requires a subtle slightly devious understanding of the world.
"The White House did not respond."
"lend me your ears"

 

Well, I am not a member of the Darwinian cult .... so the infinite monkey theorem two chances of success .... slim and NONE.

"The White House did not respond."

There is limited intelligence at the white house ... and always have been. There are no infallible presidents in this country.

 

I predict a plague of Muzak worse than what Burt Bacharach wrote.

 

Even if these creative computers "create" music, one large aspect of music creativity is how it is delivered. This is why people go to live concerts and see the same artist multiple times - the perfomance of the same piece will differ based on the situation. Mistakes will be made and corrected. That is true creativity in any art form.

jazz anyone? how to deal with a wrong chord (good advice too)