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An article on Ars Technica piqued my interest. It's about a composer/programmer who basically programmed a composition AI to produce pieces, and it's got me thinking, what should we consider to be "composition"?

I'm thinking about Steve Reich and his Phase Music concept. He would write some basic fragments, loop them at different times/tempi, and just let them run until he could pick out pieces that he liked. In Different Trains he used looped vocal samples in his composition. People praise Reich for his ideas. I'm wondering just how different this is. Reich essentially "programmed" notes, let an automated process do the rest, and then tweaked/choose what he wanted to use.

And if you think about it, we aren't creating new notes when we compose, the notes already exist, and we "program" them into pieces. After thinking about it, I believe that if a person does the programming himself, like this composer did, then it IS his creation, and should be considered to be a composition. However, if music is created using a program like Adobe Soundbooth, which can be used to pick a mood, theme, and it generates music for you, it shouldn't be considered a composition - the "writer" had no say in it whatsoever.

I'm no programmer, so I'll continue writing the old fashioned way - though on a computer - and although I get a sour taste in my mouth from the idea of an AI, it does make sense, and I admire the work this composer/programmer has done.

Labels: music

I recently returned from the National Association of Government Webmasters (NAGW) in Galveston, TX. It was a fascinating trip, not only because of what I learned, but because of the setting.

I spent 3 afternoons in downtown Galveston, "The Strand" and surrounding streets. Damage from Hurricane Ike was obvious, despite the remarkable cleanup in town. Many of the buildings had damage, some were vacated, and nearly all of them had a marker for the water line. (Imagine 10 ft of water - I can't.) Most businesses stayed, but enough of them left to make an impact.

It's a beautiful place, lots of Victorian architecture, the beautiful bay, historic homes, beaches on the Gulf of Mexico. But there used to be tall trees too, those are gone, and along the main route on the island, the cute little ranch houses often looked dilapidated. It was beautiful and sad all at once. The weekend we arrived, there was a celebration/remembrance of Ike, with concerts and races, and people from the Galveston/Houston area turned out. But when I was there it was the off-season, so it was pretty empty. The place feels "haunted", as a local said.

The conference was held at Moody Gardens, a resortish place. It's a very nice hotel that's next to a water park (which was closed of course), and it houses an aquarium, rainforest, and science museum. Good place for kids. Quite a contrast to the rest of the island!

I learned a great deal at the conference about advanced CSS, different uses of CS4, Web Analytics and more. I'll try to tweak this site as a test, if I don't get too lazy :) NAGW is such a valuable organization to government webmasters like myself!

Labels: web design