Personally, I think the claim that if computers are involved, then it isn’t music is silly and certainly is not in line with the predominant view of musical scholars.
Yes, algorithmic music is music. Algorithmic art is art. Computers, algorithms, even mathematics in general are all tools used by humans. You might as well argue that a painting isn’t art because the artist used a paintbrush instead of their own fingers. In the case of algorithmic music, a human is still building the algorithms, a human is still curating the results. That’s art. That’s music.
Even if the music is generated via a Stable Diffusion of GPT-like AI model it’s still art, just because the tool is vast and complicated doesn’t mean it’s not still a tool used by humans. You could make the argument that the human using that model isn’t an “artist” in the way someone who produces art via more traditional means is, but the end result is still art.
I agree. As an example, I’m not really a huge fan of Spiegel’s music. It’s not bad per se, it just isn’t for me. But I would never in a millions years say she isn’t a composer and musician. It is extremely obvious to anybody listening to it that there is an intent behind the music.
I also agree that there is a line, but that line is not, in my view, when a computer appears in the picture in any form.
Yeah this is a thing I see a lot. Just because something is displeasing doesn’t make it not art. Just because something is made in a way you disapprove of doesn’t mean it’s not art.
I have a fairly idiosyncratic definition of art. To me, if a human creates something with the intent to convey an idea to another human, that’s art. If I bang two rocks together, I might be leaving a mark on the natural world but that’s not in itself art. If I arrange the bits of rock I made in a pattern, that’s art. If I bang the rocks together in front of an audience, that might be art, but chances are the Artist’s Statement I handed out beforehand might be the actual art.
Curation, the act of arranging artworks to convey something, is itself art. I’ve used algorithmic music programs before, one had little sliders for how you wanted it to sound and what sort of instruments it would use. Most of what it produced was crap, but a couple of the songs were alright and I showed them to my friends. That’s curation. That’s art.
For anyone who has used an AI image generator like Stable Diffusion or DALL-E, it’s much the same way. If you really want to make something nice, you have to dig through a lot of garbage to get the good stuff. Midjourney adds a lot of hidden prompts to cut down on that process, but there’s still the act of curation. It reminds me a bit of what an editor does. You wouldn’t call an editor a writer, or an artist, but they’re an important part of the act of creation and the end result is still art.
So I would accept the argument that someone who works with algorithmic or model-made art isn’t necessarily an artist, but I still reject the notion that the end result isn’t art.
Meh. There’s always gonna be grumpy Luddites out there. As far as I’m concerned it’s music. It still makes me feel a certain way when I listen to it. I could care less if man or machine or some combination of the two composed it.
The question shouldn’t be whether it’s music or not, it’s definitely music, the question should be to what extent is a human being the artist responsible?
I think it’s important to make the distinction between “computer”, “generative” and “algorithmic” music. I, personally, see them as:
Computer - music that involves a computer in any way
Generative - music that’s ever-changing and created by a system. (Eno’s definition is good enough for me )
Algorithmic - using a set of defined rules.
Aren’t Western common practice, or counterpoint algorithmic? Yet, they don’t require computers. Using dice or converting words via some system to generate musical ideas has been around for awhile (generative), yet also don’t require computers.
I certainly think all are music - @Richard_Pearse brings up the question I find more intriguing. I think in most instances, the human is the artist responsible - however a case can be made that it’s actually a collaboration between the artist and the AI. I see it like the relationship between a composer and a composer’s assistant - neither could do it as well without the other.
I’d go a little tighter than that… To be art, what’s conveyed has to be an emotional state. An Ikea instructions diagram is one human conveying something to another human, but it’s not art: The idea being conveyed is how to assemble a bookshelf.
On the other hand, though, I also wouldn’t require that the artist or the audience be human. At least some animals definitely have emotions, and sufficiently-advanced AIs would, too (are the current AIs sufficiently-advanced to have emotions? I don’t know, but I think probably.). Art that transcends the species barrier, to convey emotion from a human to a dog or from a computer to a human, must surely be more difficult, but it’s still possible.
Well, the cerebral cortex is a computer, and a musical instrument is anything that can be used to make controlled and specific sound. When I was in high school, we had a man give a demonstration of a musical piece using a saw and a customized “bow”. He held the saw much like a violin and varied the sound by bending the saw in various ways as he moved the bow back and forth over it. It sure sounded like music to me.
Another demonstration I saw on TV as a kid was a man sitting in front of a row of glasses filled with water to various different levels. When he ran his fingers around the rim of the glasses, they produced different tones. He played music with his fingers and glasses.
So, yes, she is a composer who produces music on her instrument.
Why? I don’t think art need convey any type of emotion. Art can be emotionless, at least in my opinion. I mean, what emotional state does Duchamps’ urinal sculpture convey? Then again, you may not consider that art. Or you can imbue it with whatever emotional state you want. Put an Ikea instructions diagram in the context of an art museum, and treat it as art, and I can come up with emotional states or intellectual reasons it’s art. Or why can’t it be purely intellectual?
Yeah, I actually have two problems with @Chronos’s claim. One is that art can convey other kinds of things besides emotional states. A piece of music can be intellectually interesting, or just fun to listen to, without conveying emotion.
My other issue is: does music, in fact, convey emotion, or does it just invoke emotion? To say that music or any other art conveys emotion maybe implies that the artist/composer was in a particular emotional state when they created it, or at least had a particular emotional state in mind; that that emotional state is somehow present in the art/music; and that those who experience the art, assuming they understand it correctly, all get transported to that same emotional state as a result.
It’s clear to me that art absolutely does not convey or invoke the same emotion to different listeners, and even the same listeners can feel different emotions or no emotions whatsoever depending on their personal state when they listen to it.
I’m not convinced AI is an entity that can be collaborated with. At this point in time, AI is only a tool. A very sophisticated tool, but nonetheless only a tool. So, art produced by a human using AI, is human art, period.
If we want to get into the weeds, the collaboration is with the other humans who produced the tools used by the artist. A human produced those pigments, a human built those instruments, a human trained that AI, etc.
Maybe someday in the future, we can recognize an AI as a fellow sapient. Until then, all art is human art.
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