Cyborgs in the music? Computer, digital culture and music practices Miguel de Aguilera Professor of Communications University of Malaga
Cyborgs in the music? Computer, digital culture and music practices
Jan 15, 2015
Western popular culture includes many stories (with different formats and media, including musical works) concerning the man-machine relationships. Most of them with strong mythic resonances (from Greek and other mythologies nourishing Western culture) and more oriented towards the dystopian than utopian.
The influence of these visions of mythical background has provoked an interesting debate in recent decades on the man-machine relationship, mainly affecting the “agency” (who controls the actions of the machine?)
That debate moves (with much of its resonances) to the field of music, where the recent development of IAMUS intensifies the controversy. In that field, this debate is connected with other elements that have nurtured the "myth of music" (established within industrial society): especially, the author (genius) and the “authenticity".
Understanding the man-machine relationships in the field of music, and ponder their future considering inventions like Iamus, requires the consideration of a number of ideas and items.
Among others, the "authorship" as an idea established within industrial society (and its system of cultural industries). Also, that all musical composer has always used in his/her creative activity any technology (mechanical, electrical, digital). This digital technology, by the way, is one of the factors that influence the profound changes affecting the various phases of musical activity, that show many examples like these: remix, music selection lists, Shazam, failure of fixed contexts for music listening, breaking the IP model ... But the use of such technology is not yet affecting several major foundations that established the cultural industries to guaranty the success to their products -and to boost consumption. For example, that the relationship between listener and music product relies on the existence of recognizable musical patterns and in the right combination between repetition and innovation.
This intervention observes the Iamus and its creations from the cultural analysis, which provides some of the key ideas with which to better understand the present and future of music.
The influence of these visions of mythical background has provoked an interesting debate in recent decades on the man-machine relationship, mainly affecting the “agency” (who controls the actions of the machine?)
That debate moves (with much of its resonances) to the field of music, where the recent development of IAMUS intensifies the controversy. In that field, this debate is connected with other elements that have nurtured the "myth of music" (established within industrial society): especially, the author (genius) and the “authenticity".
Understanding the man-machine relationships in the field of music, and ponder their future considering inventions like Iamus, requires the consideration of a number of ideas and items.
Among others, the "authorship" as an idea established within industrial society (and its system of cultural industries). Also, that all musical composer has always used in his/her creative activity any technology (mechanical, electrical, digital). This digital technology, by the way, is one of the factors that influence the profound changes affecting the various phases of musical activity, that show many examples like these: remix, music selection lists, Shazam, failure of fixed contexts for music listening, breaking the IP model ... But the use of such technology is not yet affecting several major foundations that established the cultural industries to guaranty the success to their products -and to boost consumption. For example, that the relationship between listener and music product relies on the existence of recognizable musical patterns and in the right combination between repetition and innovation.
This intervention observes the Iamus and its creations from the cultural analysis, which provides some of the key ideas with which to better understand the present and future of music.
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Cyborgs in the music?Computer, digital culture and
music practices
Miguel de AguileraProfessor of Communications
University of Malaga
Why worry aboutcomputer-composers?
Melomics as a cyborg
• Cause it is impersonating the human in the field of creativity?
• But everyday life is full of smart machines that help and complement us
Cyborgization of society
• Robots in Twitter / "Associated Press" journalists replaced by robots that report on finance and other news / drones for war, digital war /…
Cyborgization of everyday life:smart machines, wearable tech …
Wearable technologies
Long distance togetherness 3D: customized prosthetics
Augmented capacities
Cloud Memory Augmented sensory perception
Realities and dreams
Hopes Nightmares
Cyborgization of the imaginaries
Blade Runner 2001: a space odissey
Euphoria and fearsUbiquity and invisibility of smart machines in our daily lifes:why we care with some of them?
Time of changes, loss of certainty
GlobalizationFree market capitalism, Permanent connectivity, Influence of Technoscience, Digitization
Everything changes so fast (and with many worrying aspects) loss of certainties (Giddens, Beck, Bauman)Crisis of meaning and moral crisis (Castells, Berger and Luckmann) we seek how to interpret and evaluate what happens to us
We use the criteria we have available: they are mixed the expert interpretations, the criteria established for the interpretation of the industrial society, even euphoria and fears deeply rooted in our cultures (human as predator and victim)
Utopias and dystopias ofan uncertain future
In our cultures, myths and other narratives Prometheus- Fankenstein
Digitization and biotechnology: robot, cyborg
Robot: term of Czech origin: slave slave that receive orders(even if an artificial one)
But: who controls the artificial hand?
F. Fukuyama, in the book "Posthuman condition”, includes an essay:"Agency or inevitability : will human beings control their technological future?”
fear for a new Spartacus?
they impersonate the gods giving life
Utopias and dystopias ofan uncertain future
Science Fiction, a popular genre which dominates the dystopian approach(an undesirable future society because of "progress"): environmental disasters, nuclear panic, totalitarian threats, fear of the "Other" - Alien: man and beast and machine)
Cyborg (1960's, cybernebetic-organism, from science) / cyberspace (1980's, from science fiction, but taken to refer to the virtualization of culture and communication)
where major narrativethemes of our culture are present
¿Cyborgs in musical creativity?Cyborg supplanting or instrument supplementing the human in musical creativity?
Another concern: it calls into question some deeply held beliefs about music that today in general we share
wich set the industrial society and today we have not yet replaced
A basic axiom in the study of culture and communication is: each stage of history has had its cultural forms, suitable instruments (technologies), their ways to get involved (actors in roles), their ways of thinking about them
Also in music, there were different stages
each type of music comes with its musical mindset
Technology and music in social systemsThe music in the societies of oral culture is received by direct hearing, spreads by imitation, evolves by reinventing the music immemorial fits individual creation, but most of the music has no author (collective works: Holy Bible, Greek mythology)
The emergence of written technology (notation, and its industrial reproducibility)
transmission through the text, independent of the context of reception
new cultural regime: figure of the composer, who signs and aspires to genius
economic transmission of the artwork (score, recording):copyrightpay to enjoy
Roles: Creation(the genius)
Edition (fixing on a support – text, recording)
distribution (interpreter)
enjoyment (contexts and rituals of reception)
Spatiotemporal context: Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London / enshrines and idealizes a culture of music and arts (establishing a canon and a "repertoire" classics)
The "myths of music" (N. Cook)A recognizable way of thinking and rating culture: high, popular, mass(despised by their technological and commercial mediations)
“Quality (classic) music”
essentialist perspective: universal aesthetic values , art by itself (idealist tradition of thought)
Authenticity (from blues to rock: no pay royalties to black authors: dishonest, commercial purposes)
have to write the songs by themselves, develop their own style (genuine expression of self: no commercial interests
values: innovation> tradition, creation> reproduction, personal expression> Marketplace
Author: music as raw material, author in central position (genius, inspired, abstracted from requirements and constraints)
creates and is entitled to earn money
Changes in musicWe live in a era of important changes, as it was the irruption of print: digitization
with sampling, sequencer (help in the composition), mixing programs and arrangements, synthesizer (sounds without real referent), standard MIDI …
giving power to the individual (professional, amateur, Pro Am, producer -result of collective intelligence-)
Production
(bankruptcy of the power of the sender, frequently occurs through collective intelligence, is based on the connection to the "net" and on the disponiblity of almost every product of human culture, numbers become and deterritorialized Indeed, music is 0s and 1s playing back is not reproducing copies, but always original
In the nature of the music
Multiple sources, constant hybridization (global-local)
New business models, new roles, new cultural practices (music as an accessory element, linked to lifestyles) new schemes of interpretation of musical phenomena
Distribution (not attached to a support, ways access multiplying) and reception (broking
fixed contexts and rituals -deterritorialization and reterritorialization-)
Cibercultural contextWhy we talk about cyberculture
It is one of the names of culture in our society (other: eg, liquid culture, Bauman), which refers to an imaginary (cyber) and emphasizes the strong digital dimension of our cultural life (hardware, software, content: inseparable hybrid digital electronic material and symbolic environments)
The supernatural, so clearly explained by Ortega y Gasset (creation of an artificial environment -which overlaps the natural, blending in with him-, which includes symbolic elements, where we could achieve wellness), is digital today
Separate technology, culture and society is an invention of the industrial society (one of its ideal bases)associated with technological determinism seeks to made invisible, and that seems inevitable by its autonomous logic, certain technological development (hiding the complex relationship of forces that are behind its development)
Factors, conditions, agents That digital supernatural is the result of a context (requirements of contemporary capitalism, World War II and Cold War, ...), in which the influence of certain ideas are included:
countercultural utopias (silicon + LSD in California) movement "computers for the people" (in the hands of people without technical guardianships or powers) and otherprinciples: interconnection (allow interpersonal communication), community building (social bond), which is developed as a smart group
activity of certain subcultural movements (punk, etc.) and avant-garde artappropriate new techniques, subvert the order proposed
In sum, the main social agent that brings out cyberculture (here and there): educated urban youth
Arts, enrolled in cyberculture• Arts for art's sake is a thing of the past. Art does not only refer to
itself, but reflects the outside world and often acts as a catalyst for certain tendencies in society. That also goes for the merging of man and technology. Some artists reflect(ed) contemporary technology and use(d) it as material for considerations on the role of technology in society. What matters is finding new points of reference, that can define the nature of human existence.
• An artistic orientation with many expressions: comics (Möbius), videoinstalaciones (Nam Jun Paik), ars infographica, videojuegos/ Blade Runner, Total recall, The Matrix, …
• In the music: John CageStockhausen(Velvet Undergroud, Pink Floyd)punkmusic recording studioDJsDetroit Techno, Chicago House, New York Garage, …
Arts for art's sake is a thing of the past. Art does not only refer to itself, but reflects the outside world and often acts as a catalyst for certain tendencies in society. That also goes for the merging of man and technology. Some artists reflect(ed) contemporary technology and use(d) it as material for considerations on the role of technology in society. What matters is finding new points of reference, that can define the nature of human existence.
Music
John Cage
Stockhousen
Velvet Underground
(Pink Floyd
PunkMusic
recording studio
Djs
Detroit Techno
Chicago house
Cyborgization of Music
From Kraftwerk To Janelle Monae
Pierre Lévy (1997): Cyberculture
“The genres of the cyberculture are highly diverse: automatic compositions of scores or texts, techno musics from a recursive sampling work and arrangements from existing music, artificial life systems or autonomous robots, virtual worlds, web pages that point to the aesthetic or cultural intervention, hypermedia, events federated through the network by involving participants via digital devices, various hybridizations of the "real" and the "virtual”, interactive installations, etc.”
Prophecies? Foresight and insight
“All traits I just listed: active participation of the performers, collective creation, work-event, work-process, interconnection and mixing limits, work emerging -as a visual Aphrodite- from an ocean of digital signs, all these features converge to the decline (but not to the pure and simple disappearance) of the two figures so far have ensured the integrity, substantiality and possible totalization of works: author and recording.”
Musical futurologyRadical changes: need for new criteria to understand
Very fast changes versus the need to provide medium-term scenarios: prospective of technology and of cultural practices
Several new professional activities: traits predicting the traist of future, cool hunting, emphasis on the marketing
stresses, in the technological field: streaming and mobility (+ the immersive: virtual reality)
Tips for music professionals (includes considering an increasing global competition and with the amateurs -Pro Am, produser-; but not with cyborgs)
New business models
The most scarce and precious commodity: the user's attention get engaged (and then, viralize)
Prospectives
Computer composing Challenge
Do not forget that the computer is an assistant tool of the composer, who wants to generate music for certain purposes
The technology is not closed, is not determined alone, the future is built
there are different social actors struggling to guide the world (with utopian or dystopian visions)
Uses to increase freedom or welfare?
open source, empowerment and other (but attention to the exploitation of this: Double appropriations –remix-, advertising and viralizations, economy of emotions –facebook-)
Cyborgs composingComposing IAMUS, Melomics or successors the Ode to Joy, or the Heroic, by themselves? It lacks the genius -in profound ways that it rests- and the condition of "us"
Pinching in the heart to see your children sleep /satisfaction for waking love or be loved / melancholy that comes and goes (and Mahler helps underscore) / pleasure of a pint at the seaside / mortality awareness
We are people made in the interaction with other
Ortega y Gasset: dintorno and contour (I am myself and my circumstances)
Will they replicate Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (or genetic engineering) each element of the human being?and for what? (replicant in Blade Runner: with feelings, personality made in interaction, awareness of mortality)
Disturbing prospective?It will affect easier to popular music (mass culture) tweak elements of previous codes, combined in new ways
Cyborg composer
Generating own styles?
Style requires deep insertion in the context
to be linked to lifestyles (that often includes rituals)
Even if:
Big data: behavioral traits processed for defining lifestyles
Trend uptake mechanisms (cool hunting, etc.) and promoting lifestyles
Data provided by neuromarketing and other neuroscience
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