Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
MacIntosh computer, and developed by David Cope, a professor in the
UCSC Music Department.
Cope's inspiration for the program came in 1981 when, as a composer
in his own right, he found himself floundering in a period of “composer's
block”. So he decided to try to write a program that could emulate his
own compositional style, with the idea that the program could act as
his collaborator. He started by designing a system that could take, as its
input, many works by a classical composer, and from them extract the
characteristics that typify the particular composer's style. EMI was the
eventual result, and turned out not only to be able to compose a “Mozart”
symphony that attracted the critical acclaim of music aficionados, but
also to be able to compose works in the styles of Brahms, Rachmaninov,
J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and even the ragtime composer Scott
Joplin. Cope was so enthralled by his program's success in writing Mozart's
42
nd
that he declared, “There's no expert in the world who could, with-
out knowing its sources, say for certain that it's not Mozart.” [9]
EMI has also made a nice job of increasing the repertoire of Chopin
mazurkas. Douglas Hofstadter, a cognitive science professor and the
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Godel, Escher, Bach
, is also a gifted pi-
anist and a passionate lover of Chopin's music. In his book, published in
1979, Hofstadter speculated on whether an artificially intelligent com-
puter would ever be able to compose uplifting music, and concluded
that, in order to create music as mesmerizing as that of the famous com-
posers, a program would have to learn what it feels like to be alive. It. . .
...wouldhavetowanderaroundtheworldonitsown,fightingits
way through the maze of life and feeling every moment of it. It
would have to understand the joy and loneliness of a chilly night
wind, the longing for a cherished hand. [9]
In this belief Hofstadter overlooks an important point. It is not necessary
for a computer program to
learn
what it feels like to be alive, rather it is
sufficient for the program to learn how people who
do know
what it feels
like to be alive, behave when they are composing music. It is not the
experience
of life that a program must mimic, it is the
behaviour
of those
who
have
experienced life.
Cope's success in programming this mimicry amazed Hofstadter when,
two decades after writing the above words, he played some of EMI's
“Chopin” mazurkas for the first time. Hofstadter described the expe-
rience as
