Amateur is Not Just a Flavor of Porn
An anonymous graffito poignantly remarked that “time doesn’t exist, clocks exist”. As an amateur quantum physicist (very amateur), this tickles my ganglia. While my feeble grip on the finer points of quantum theory, compression of time and the Singularity would probably cause Steven Hawking to roll over Einstein’s grave, I’d like to consider for a minute the relationship between time and music.
My interest lies not so much in the time that unfolds within the music – the tempo, rhythm, etc… – but the time between the initial desire to hear certain music and the moment at which a listener can consume (yes, consume) the desired sound. It’s really pretty quick now – when I decide I’d like to listen to, it’s only a matter of seconds before I can get my fix through search engines. Moreover, artificial intelligence devoted to learning our musical preferences and reducing our need to actively search is already fairly developed – Pandora, the iTunes Genius thinger, etc… It’s still hit or miss though – that’s why Pandora has a thumbs-down button.
What really gives me that Gold-Bond-on-a-hot-day tingle is thinking beyond the Singularity, when biological and artificial intelligence become one. As I see it, computers will be able to synchronously determine what sounds make us feel good, and to produce sounds that make us feel even better. What will this “music” sound like? Current attempts at turning minds into music are interesting, but musically underwhelming.
For now, please forgive my shot-in-the-dark at some music that may or may not make you feel good:
Ramona Cordova – The Coda (FREE album download)
Foetus (aka JG Thirlwell)
