Computational Aesthetics and Music: The Ugly, the Small and the Boring

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Author(s)
Kalonaris, Stefano
Gifford, Toby
Brown, Andrew
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2019
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Show full item recordAbstract
Contemporary musical aesthetics, as a field in the humanities, does not typically argue for the existence of aesthetic universals. However, in the field of computational creativity, universals are actively sought, with a view to codification and implementation. This article critiques some statistical and information-based methods that have been used in computational creativity, in particular their application in assessing aesthetic value of musical works, rather than the more modest claim of stylistic characterization. Standard applications of Zipf’s Law and Information Rate are argued to be inadequate as computational ...
View more >Contemporary musical aesthetics, as a field in the humanities, does not typically argue for the existence of aesthetic universals. However, in the field of computational creativity, universals are actively sought, with a view to codification and implementation. This article critiques some statistical and information-based methods that have been used in computational creativity, in particular their application in assessing aesthetic value of musical works, rather than the more modest claim of stylistic characterization. Standard applications of Zipf’s Law and Information Rate are argued to be inadequate as computational measures of aesthetic value in musical styles where noise, repetition or stasis are valued features. We describe three of these musical expressions, each with its own aesthetic criteria, and examine several exemplary works for each. Lacking, to date, is a computational framework able to account for socio-political and historical implications of creative processes. Beyond quantitative evaluations of artistic phenomena, we argue for deeper intersections between computer science, philosophy, history and psychology of art.
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View more >Contemporary musical aesthetics, as a field in the humanities, does not typically argue for the existence of aesthetic universals. However, in the field of computational creativity, universals are actively sought, with a view to codification and implementation. This article critiques some statistical and information-based methods that have been used in computational creativity, in particular their application in assessing aesthetic value of musical works, rather than the more modest claim of stylistic characterization. Standard applications of Zipf’s Law and Information Rate are argued to be inadequate as computational measures of aesthetic value in musical styles where noise, repetition or stasis are valued features. We describe three of these musical expressions, each with its own aesthetic criteria, and examine several exemplary works for each. Lacking, to date, is a computational framework able to account for socio-political and historical implications of creative processes. Beyond quantitative evaluations of artistic phenomena, we argue for deeper intersections between computer science, philosophy, history and psychology of art.
View less >
Conference Title
Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Musical Metacreation (MUME 2019)
Publisher URI
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subject
Digital and electronic media art
Music composition and improvisation