in the UK, Metro A recent newspaper ran a headline article about experts warning that AI is an existential threat to humanity…it was on page four. We are so accustomed to the pervasiveness of new technologies that even the danger of extinction is now an issue not worthy of a headline. Its existence in the modern world is so seamless that we condemn it for its weirdness. But imagine we live in a time when machines with new capabilities called “automobiles” emerged from primitive industries and suddenly trudged down the road. It was a proposal so daunting that two young Italian boys nearly lost their lives. In the process, it soon launched a movement to predict the future.
It all started when a poet named Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was speeding down the road in his brand new car. Two young friends on bicycles, accustomed to just watching out for rogue donkeys, suddenly had to turn to avoid Marinetti’s attacking Death Machine while biking on the same road. did not become. In the ensuing rage and uproar, a futurist idea sprouted in Marinetti’s reckless mind.
Marinetti was reprimanded by the youths and realized that machines were stronger than humans. It was survival of the fittest, and the industry was much more of the fittest than the individual. Marinetti died after a near miss by two humble young men. Manifesto of Futurism. There was a law that said: “We proclaim that the brilliance of the world has been enriched with a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose bonnet is adorned with a huge tube like a serpent with explosive breath… A motor car that roars like it runs under gunfire is more beautiful than the Winged Victory of Samothrace.”
The Nike of Samothrace is a Hellenistic Greek sculpture depicting the goddess Nike standing on the prow of a ship. A very elaborate piece, except that her head and arms are missing. But it doesn’t move and it doesn’t thunder. Actually it does nothing. Cute without purpose. Gone are the days when the world surpassed simple beauty.it was now Are doingAnd nothing does more powerful things than machines. He argued: “Destroy the museum. Crack syntax. Interfere with adjectives. Leave nothing but verbs.”
So when I recently spoke with the founder of the new AI music-making app ITOKA about how AI could help streamline music-making, his points about artistic efficiency were futurist. resonated with the decree of “The goal of this AI technology is not to replace human creativity, but to increase the efficiency with which people create music, thereby expanding the realm and limits of human creativity in music,” he said. said.
Essentially, the argument is that a battery-powered tool is to a musician what a carpenter is to a carpenter. “It’s just a tool, isn’t it?” he asserts. “People can use this tool to do more great things—human societies and cultural perceptions further. We can bring more creativity into the universe. People who don’t want to use this technology for their lives can suffer from the gap we’ve created between those who use data and those who don’t.”
It’s this aspect of the gap that unsettles people, essentially the gap between humanity and the modest power of technology. But back in those days, Manifesto of Futurism, all this confusing power was part of the beauty. Points 1 and 2 of the manifest state:
- We want to sing a love of danger, a habit of energy and recklessness.
- The essential elements of our poetry are courage, boldness, and
rebellion.
It was part of the program for futurists to break away from humanity’s capabilities, no matter what destruction it would bring. Getting rid of the old and bringing in the new was the only way in art to advance the world.
This radical concept spread as a new work of art and piqued the interest of a Russian composer. Arseny Avramov was a strange man for his time – he was essentially interested in music theory and propaganda. By the time he started hearing about Futurism, he was teaching a music-acoustics course at the Pressman Conservatory in Rostov-on-Don and interacting with high-ranking officials. Shortly after the October Revolution, he proposed to public enlightenment commissioner Anatoly Lunacharsky a new project to burn all the pianos in the USSR.
This never materialized, but of course Avramov was looking to a new future for Soviet music. During this time, he rebelled against his 12-tone scale, focusing on the harmonium, a noise source that resembled modern stereo sound. In the process, he devised new genres of music to match the world’s growing urban environments.
Along the way, he accurately predicted synthetic sounds, amplified vocals, and many other techniques that underpin contemporary music. As he wrote in his 1916 article, A New Era in Music Science and Music History (This title alone is prescient enough, given that at the time music was largely acoustic and almost completely detached from science): “Tone is the soul of music. Building a harmonic scheme and “orchestrating” it is no longer creative. In this way, the music creation process can be fully decomposed down to a series of compositional exercises. Invent a set of timbres, incorporate arbitrary rhythms, harmonize the resulting melody and finally start coloring. , historically using off-the-shelf palettes. “
So now, as we stand on the precipice of music’s ultimate future, where technology not only facilitates the creation of music, but where only human horsemen are at the helm and actually create it themselves, We dream of the most dangerous Marinetti ever. In addition, humble musicians stand next to their bicycles and denounce the movement. The question of who will win the debate remains to be seen.
