Reading Response #1
Celeste Betancur Gutierrez
02/02/2023
Music 356 Stanford University


Reading Response

We are always so fascinated by the idea of the new but at the same time so scared of the future... Every new tool that we as humans have designed has passed the same scrutiny, but it is the first time that we are also seeing tools that create output by "themselves" knowing that this is not entirely true but it is amazing to see how the output emerges almost magically, from ¿nowhere?.

Black magic escaping from a black box and yet, it is amazing how these tools are questioning the way we define and put a value on our own creations (aesthetical, economic, cultural... ).

My personal opinion is obfuscated right now: I feel that in a sense these powerful technologies should be resolving and helping us with other tasks and not creative ones, tasks that are repetitive, boring and that a technic as such would be a great help for humankind, knowing that these tasks are not very popular so no one would be interested in doing that. But developing such things, will not bring you investors. Those are not provocative enough to be famous! But a machine that makes art sounds so disparate and arcane at the same time, as the Golem that walks after it has been infatuated by the alchemist.

But why not a machine that helps you make awesome music? Connected to biosensors in a club that sense people's excitement, a deep algorithm that encodes these signals and decodes new music on the fly and you, the new AI Dj are there to command the trip to infinity hand-to-hand, back-to-back with a computer. A dance-to-audiovisual latent space full of psychedelic creatures and the perfect music for a specific crowd.

Confused but dancing to the rhythm of musicML melodic techno example, I'll go to sleep and see how all ends up.