OF FLESH AND STEEL: COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY IN MUSIC AND THE BODY ISSUE

Mattia Merlini

University of Milan
Milan, Italy

Author’s contact information: mattia.merlini@studenti.unimi.it

Stefano Maria Nicoletti

University of Twente
Enschede, Netherlands

Author’s contact information: s.m.nicoletti@utwente.nl

INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology, Issue 4, 2020

Main Theme of the Issue: Human-Machine Collaboration in Art, Technology and Theory

Publisher: INSAM Institute for Contemporary Artistic Music, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Section: MAIN THEME: HUMAN-MACHINE COLLABORATION IN ART, TECHNOLOGY AND THEORY

Abstract:  Could machines ever take our place in the creation of art, and particularly music? The outstanding results of some well-known AIs (e.g. EMI, Flow Machines) might make us believe that this is the case. However, despite this evidence it seems that machines present some intrinsic limits both in creative and non-creative contexts (already highlighted by John Searle and the debate around mechanism). The arguments of this paper are centred around this very belief: we are convinced that the utopian claims regarding all-round machine intelligence are not plausible and that our attention should be directed towards more relevant issues in the field of computational creativity. In particular, we focus our attention on what we call the “body issue”, i.e. the role of the body in the experience and creation of music, that we consider problematic for the idea of a truly creative machine (even if we take into consideration weaker renditions of artificial intelligence). Our argument is based on contemporary findings in neuroscience (especially on embodied cognition) and on the theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Roland Barthes.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, computational creativity, mirror neurons, embodied cognition, embodied simulation, body, creativity, performance

PDF:

ISSN 2637 – 1898
COBISS.BH-ID 26698502
UDC 
78:792
On the cover: Sougwen Chung, Exquisite Corpus
 Design and layout: Milan Šuput, Bojana Radovanović

The Journal is indexed in:
CEEOL – Central and Eastern European Online Library
RILM – Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale

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