The Swarm

My latest Discover column, on Tim Blackwell and Peter Bentley's brilliant "Swarm Music" project, which uses mathematical models of bee swarming behavior to create the loosely structure flow of improv music. Here's a taste:

"Blackwell thinks it may be most useful as a compositional tool, not as a replacement for the creative process. Just as the flight of a real-world bumblebee inspired Rimsky-Korsakov to write his now-ubiquitous melody, the flight of these virtual swarms may inspire a new generation of composers, creating passages of music that would then be shaped and refined into final renditions. The swarm doesn't write songs; it suggests new avenues to explore.

I find this idea enticing precisely because it swarms in the face of the preconception that computers are there to store our files and record our keystrokes and nothing more. Swarm music suggests that this virtual-stenographer role may be an artifact of computing's early days. Simple digital machines are good at capturing and storing information. Complex machines are good at generating new kinds of information and triggering new connections, even if that information must eventually be polished by humans. What they produce is more launching pad than archive. That's why I suspect the rough-edged quality of the swarm compositions may turn out to be, as they say, a feature -- not a bug."

Comments

[EJ]

But what would we call this act of "polishing"? Would it introduce a new category of producers? If there was such a thing as "Swarm Writing" that created passages of texts that could later be shaped into final renditions, would we consider the producers of these final renditions writers? In fact, isn't this the claim of college essay websites that offer students essays (or "passages of texts") to be shaped into their own final renditions. Is it possible to plagiarize technology?

[phil jones]

Hi Steve,

If you're interested in emergent music you may also like Gbloink! :

http://216.36.193.92/gbloink/index.html

(and some notes here :
http://216.36.193.92/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WhyGbloinkIsInteresting)

regards

phil jones

[David Weisman]

This should set off a loud buzz in the music world.

[J.F. Bury]

Just as the adaptation of this certain rare, cabalastic force was used as the medium though which textual excerscise could spawn, in the case of James Joyce's genius, Ulysses(and perhaps equally as exemplified in the writing of Virginia Woolf; her strained, periodically diffusing prose)the technological adaptations of
this age-old mechanism will today, wether it be with Music or the way people surf the Internet, excite a brand new stream of intelligent creativity and, quite to the contrary of plagarizing, it will promote new individial talent, augmenting the (recent) tradition of utilizing this strange force of mother nature in
creative ways.

[J.F. Bury]

(ignore that last text this is what was supposed to have made it up)

Swarming:

The striking similarity to the Modernist adaptation of this certain rare, cabbalistic force as the medium though which textual exercise could spawn, in the case of James Joyce's genius, Ulysses, a multi-layered cohering textual Swarm (a style which is perhaps equally exemplified in the writings of Virginia Woolf; its strained, periodically diffusing prose) would demand us to pause before assessing what contemporary creative merit this holds, and if, indeed, it holds any. Much to the contrary of plagiarizing, I feel today's technological adaptations of this age-old phenomena today will excite, whether it be with Music or the way people surf the Internet, entirely new streams of intelligent creativity –– and much to the dismay of those concerned with AI bearing an artistic brunt, will flush great individual talent into this somewhat recent tradition of augmenting one of Mother Nature's most awesome powers in thoroughly inventive ways.

[Robin]

The link to www.timblackwell.com does not work.