[hal-00380701, v1] Comment on The Computer as the Artist's Alter Ego

Author manuscript, published in "Leonardo 23, 4 (1990) 461-462"COMMENT ON "THE COMPUTER AS THE ARTIST'S ALTER EGO"Bernard BelLeonardo, vol. 23, no. 4. 1990, p. 461-462.It is my pleasure to comment on Otto Laske's paper (Leonardo 23,No. 1, 53-66, 1990). I had the opportunity to read severalpublished papers and preprints by Laske when preparing a one-daydiscussion on composition theory, which he recently was invitedto chair at the Laboratoire Musique et Infonnatique de Marseille(MIM).As a computer scientist, I have been involved in research workwith ethnomusicologists and contemporary musicians for a numberof years [1]. Both the analysis of improvisational schemata ofNorth Indian tabla players and the work with contemporarymusicians have convinced me that looking at 'frozen' data(scores) yields a very narrow understanding of musical systems.People (including musicians) who use computers are often stuckwith the belief that the world beyond computer representationsis very weakly related to the topic they are investigating.Taking just the opposite view, the romantic attitude stipulatesthat music (hence music making), like any 'high-level' humanactivity, cannot be captured in formal descriptions. Indeed,computer tools and methods available so far are still ininfancy; but to ignore their potential role would be the denialof a positivist attitude toward progress, which I believe hasalways been a characteristic of art music (be it in WesternEurope or, ...