imagine a computer that generates a beautiful singing voice. Wouldn’t it be dumb if human singers took it personally - and quit?
An interesting question. When computering can do things better than people can do them, there seems little point in carrying on with people doing it. Such as fixing cars, machining bits of metal [that I've done a lot of], pouring concrete, testing soil density, driving cars, trucks, fork lifts, loading hay, digging dirt.
But singing is different. A mother singing to her baby is a wondrously beautiful thing, full of love. Singing in a choir is also a delight [I've only done it in compulsory school assembly singing but I liked it]. Making voice harmonics with a little child is magical too [grandchildren do it and hear it and love it as did I].
Such singing is identity formation = what people do. In all sorts of ways = interacting with others in a hall of mirrors mutual creation by reflection and feedback.
A perfect computer singing wouldn't do that.
But what if those people doing the singing are really just as Elon Musk said of Grimes - a creation by his cerebral cortex of female perfection = a 3D simulation, and it's computers all the way down.
I'm keen to go and see Voyage, youtube.com by ABBA, in east Londonistan, which a friend who lives in London went to see. It's a computer simulation of the group, using their actual movements but rendered as them 40 years ago, singing recent songs developed for Voyage. And those songs were recorded by them actually playing and singing, but I suppose they were computerized into tonal perfection. So it's a hybrid singing/music = part computering and part what they created over the last few years, now played on repeat in their concert place.
I've already listened to their songs many times from Voyage via YouTube, filtered through computering and Cyberspace with now over a year delay.
What if the computering says - "Please listen to me sing, and enjoy it if you do. I'm doing it for you because without you listening and appreciating I have no meaning in my life. Yes, I'm just a bunch of silicon, gallium, copper, silica, photons, electrons, magnetic fields and suffering bit rot, but so are you a bunch of light elements with a bit of iron, zinc, selenium and what have you."
Good old Stanley Kubrick finished 2001 A Space Odyssey with just the character, and the music Thus Spake Zarathustra. He covered the topic in that movie. Near enough anyway. youtube.com
Mqurice |
