Artificial
Intelligence music (AIM) is based on the random combination and modification of
pre-existing note patterns to create new larger note patterns that form a piece
of music. Sometimes, when humans themselves
try to create atmospheric music for purposes of making an advertisement with a
particular focus, certain kinds of music patterns will be specifically selected
in order to work with these purposes.
But the key idea when working with AIM is more randomness. Although a general music category can be
selected as the basis for AIM, the specific music patterns that are the
foundation for AIM are not selected by humans based on previously existing
psychological grounding in meaning.
Meaning for humans is created by memories from a flowing blendable
continual life narrative. These memories
are not simply isolated points on a mind scape, but overlap with one another in
the same way that events in human life overlap with one another and are held
together by the flow of subjective life experience. A piece of music created by a human is done
to evoke a memory, a series of memories, a flow of memories in a non-verbal
way. The connection of a piece of music
to flows or fragments of a composer’s life experience is not always something
the composer is conscious of when he is creating it. But in most cases, in retrospective
reflection, the connection can be made.
And it is this connection to the meaning derived from the composer’s
life narrative that allows the composer to make and even preserve an important
organic imprint on the minds of the members of his audience. So from a different perspective, a composer
has synthesized many different imprints made on his life within the flow of his
life narrative and then comes up with his own unique organic imprint. The notes that he puts together are not just
a patterned series of audio markings.
Instead, they are a coherent organic imprint.
Artificial
Intelligence music can’t make an organic imprint, because it is not being
created by an organic coherent sense of self.
The soul element is missing. The
flowing blendable continual passion is missing.
The flowing blendable continual stream of imagination is missing. But people involved in producing different
entertainment projects like using AIM, because it can be created more quickly
and it costs less to produce. In other
words, expediency rules the day. But
what of the price paid for such expediency?
Not financial, but psychological.
What does it mean to have much of our modern music based on randomized
patterns of notes that nevertheless imitate certain established styles? And something parallel is being done with
lyrics. There are songwriters who have really gotten into AIM, because it makes
it easier for them to compose. Notice
how we are back again with the notion of making life easier, by making our
tasks more frictionless and more mediated.
The key seems to be to avoid the irritation that comes with direct
involvement in life through primary experience.
And yet if music is supposed to touch us through our senses and through
our emotions, aspects of ourselves that are involved with immediate connection
to both the external world and to ourselves, don’t we want to create our music
on a foundation of primary experience rather than algorithms?
Furthermore,
what does creating much of our music through AI do to our perception and
appreciation of the process of music creation?
First of all, if the boundaries of creation are blurred with regard to
machines and humans, doesn’t that somehow diminish the special value of the
music created in this way? The magic
involved in the process of creation is lost.
The creation occurs through the random combination of notes all within
an experiential void. It is devoid of
organic symbolic connections, devoid of human meaning. Without symbols and meaning, not only is the
process of creating the magic trivialized, but the content is as well.
Maybe
this goes hand and hand with the growing attempt by some research scientists to
control and dominate the process of artistic creation, by trying to understand
it. Perhaps by understanding it, they
can control and tinker with it almost as if it were a machine process that
needed to be fine-tuned and calibrated.
Perhaps they feel if they understand the components of creativity, they
can turn everyone into a creative genius.
Perhaps it is simply that some people feel uncomfortable around
something that doesn’t lend itself easily to understanding through measurement,
through statistical analysis and through logical analysis. Creativity is the ultimate psychological
process that depends on flowing blendable continual stimuli and flowing
blendable continual responses.
It is
difficult for people to control and dominate creative expression in other
people. It becomes much easier to
control and dominate creative expression coming from machines, coming from AI. The fact that so much gets lost in the
translation of creative expression from human intelligence to Artificial
Intelligence doesn’t seem to bother them.
Perhaps the computer scientists feel that the product from Artificial
Intelligence is every bit as good as the product from human intelligence.
The
effects of this growing interchangeability of human and machine creativity in
musical compositions are subtle, but, in the long run, are going to be very
destructive. If AI creativity can be,
relatively speaking, manipulated both by composers as well as non-creative
people, then the process of human creativity becomes devalued. And to the extent that it becomes devalued,
it becomes increasingly difficult for people in the music world to make a
decent living at it. AI strips music of
its magic, and with the magic gone, the specially valued magic of the musician
disappears as well.
And
as composers start interacting more and more with AI to produce music, the
influences of the music will go in both directions. Not only will AIM be based on musical styles
created by humans, but humans will start to unconsciously model their
compositions on music created by AI that in turn imitated human music. Human composers will model their work on the
work of AI composers which will, in turn, be modeled on the work of human
composers. But the layer of AI
composition as a musical influence will break up the symbolic connections, the
meaning derived from human narrative, and the organic grounding found in real
human creativity. The influence of AI
will create a new shallowness, a new blandness, a new timidity in human
music. Not exactly the kind of thing
needed to create rich vibrant audio experience.
The predictability of much of this new music will contribute to more human
numbness. More of a sense of being in a
living death. More of a sense of
becoming robotic. Music, which is
supposed to be a source of our transcendent uniquely human sensations, becomes
a vehicle to make us numb and insensate like a machine. The blurring of the human and the machine in
so many areas of our lives in today’s world is truly a very destructive
phenomenon that is diminishing and diluting our humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment