Iamus, classical music’s computer composer, live from Malaga
The first music composed by computer considered good enough for top-class musicians to play is to be performed to mark the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth
-
As soon as you see the title of Iamus’s composition Transits – Into an Abyss, you know it’s going to be challenging, modernist stuff. The strings pile up discords, first spooky, now ominous. But if your tastes run to Bartók, Ligeti and Penderecki, you may like it. At least you have to admit this bloke knows what he’s doing. But this bloke doesn’t know anything at all. Iamus is a computer program. Until the London Symphony Orchestra was handed the score, no human had intervened in preparing the music. “When we tell people that, they think it’s a trick,” says Francisco Vico, leader of the team at the University of Malaga who devised Iamus. “Some say they simply don’t believe us. Others say it’s just creepy.” He expects that when Iamus’s debut CD is released in September, performed by top-shelf musicians including the LSO, it is going to disturb a lot of folk. (via Iamus, classical music’s computer composer, live from Malaga | Music | guardian.co.uk)
(via wildcat2030)
Frank Zappa would be amused.
Take that Hofstadter, though I know you’re reveling in this.