Moved to tears by transistors, shivers of joy from lines of code, is it possible – it seems so. Emily Howell is a computer program written by David Cope, Dickerson Emeriti Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Listening to the music invokes a strange sensation. Irrespective of weather one thinks the music has merit, the sheer idea that something non-animal has composed something with a sense of flow, structure and rhythm is truly astounding. Is this not the exclusive domain of the hominid or the song bird?
The programmer has simply tapped into the same process that makes people good composers – our capacity to remember, both consciously and subconsciously an enormous database of sound and music and then combine them into new and 'original' compositions. By teaching the computer general ‘rules of thumb’ the computer essentially looks up snippets of music’s which traditionally follow one another and spits out something that is more often than not, better than what 99% of the general population could ever attempt.
Many people would find this idea a somewhat offensive suggestion but to me it’s a beautifully humbling one. This latest development in human inquiry builds upon the mountain of evidence bravely started by the Galileos of our early scientific history. It brings us one step closer to realising that We share some blood with Emily, being at heart and in mind essentially transistors and code. The similarities to the nerve synapse and DNA code is plain for all to see – it’s just that Emily when measured against us resembles something more like a humble bacterium. But, before you scoff at the thought and fall off your chair, does this make us any less special. No of course not. As Douglas Adams says “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
