[NewMusic] What David Cope is up to

[barry threw]

> Looking carefully at the website reveals that it's most hoped-for  
> use will be to bring it's makers a large profit.

Well, thats a part of it. I personally don't have an issue with  
monetizing technologies to ensure continued development.

> The larger world, not six tech geeks in a chat room.

Seventy years ago, this statement would have been right. However the  
tech world IS the larger world now, and its been steadily moving this  
way for the entire 20th century.

You seem to think that people that build technologies are a bunch of  
naive wide eyed hippies that somehow think we are going bring about a  
utopia. Well, we aren't idiots, actually, tech people are some of the  
most cynical I have met. It takes a lot of thought and planning to  
make this stuff happen, where do you get off inferring that we don't  
think about things before we do them? Everyone had bright thoughts  
about how things in the last 70 years, specifically the internet,  
would change the world. Many of them came true. But few were dumb  
enough to think it would be perfect. Generally, creating stereotypes  
about entire segments of the population is considered bad form.

> I'm not using the word 'crap' to sell product, and congratulate  
> myself on how 'useful'
> the latest tech widget is, and how wonderful the world will be when  
> everyone has
> version 10.4.7.

We're up to 10.5.1.

>> Are you for real? I can't tell whether you're an actual human, or  
>> something created by a marketing department.

Ouch. Yes.

Did you consider the problem I laid out or just balk at my techno- 
babble?  You do know the interactive media (read "games" at this  
point, although I think this word doesn't do justice to the potential  
of the medium) industry makes more money than movies? You do consider  
it a serious art form, right? You do think that music is an important  
element to emotionally support a narrative form? OK.

Then answer me this: how do you write music for this kind of open  
ended story telling? Music that is moving? Music that is not  
repetitious?

The plot lines in these works run into the hundreds of hours...are you  
expecting someone to compose 100 hour long compositions?  How do we  
tie it into the actions of the player? The state of the game  
environment reflect the emotional state of the player, and vice  
versa...we have to be able to create music that isn't boring, ties  
into these elements that are only partially determined at the start of  
play, and have it not sound like general midi...

You honestly don't think that a system that can identify stylistic  
compositional gestures and create intelligent variations on them would  
be useful in this regard?

Are you for real?

>> No one that thought about technology in a serious way for half a
>> second was under the impression that it was a nirvana, ever.
>
> You're sure of this? Really, really certain?

OK.  You got me...but just because any time I use words like  
"everybody" or "always" I'm going to be wrong.  My fault. There ARE  
people that don't consider the repercussions of their actions.

My point is that it isn't just this big world of venture capital and  
marketing guys running amuck shouting things like "leveraging  
synergies".  Yes, that exists...but technology is generally not built  
by those people. We look ahead as best we can.

H.G. Wells and Huxley both presented popular visions (can I not use  
"vision"? would that make them "visionaries"? fuck.) of ways in which  
technologies could negatively impact society. Thats late nineteenth  
century. Lately, Bill Joy has been on a pretty good dystopian kick,  
and Kurzweil considers this aspect of a lot of his techno-dreams as  
far fetched as they may be. I'm sure there are earlier examples dating  
from pre-industrial revolution, but I would have to dig for sources  
and I'm not at home until this weekend.

> How about less advertising? Or is that too utopian?


We have to make money to survive, which requires a business model. Or  
is that too realistic?

b

--
Barry Threw
Media Art and Technology

San Francisco, CA
Work: 857-544-3967
Email: bthrew at gmail.com
IM: captogreadmore (AIM)
http:/www.barrythrew.com