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Article 5196 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Intelligence, awareness, and esthetics
Message-ID: <1992Apr22.153550.19640@javelin.sim.es.com>
Date: 22 Apr 92 15:35:50 GMT
References: <1992Apr21.155531.23910@ncsa.uiuc.edu> <1992Apr21.212425.9210@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com> <1992Apr22.122656.1303@nuscc.nus.sg>
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
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smoliar@jit.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:

>In article <1992Apr21.212425.9210@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com>
>shanks@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Mark Shanks) writes:
>>>Shannon claimed that the symphonies as played by the "greats" produced higher
>>>numbers than the same symphonies conducted/performed by less skilled
>>>musicians.
>>>
>>>The claim was that the _rate_ at which information is transferred along the
>>>channel to the receiver is higher for works by the great artists (and by a
>>>few
>>>institutionalized schizophrenics!) than it is for, say, black velvet Elvi.
>>>
>>>The implication was that it is completely possible to objectify aesthetics,
>>>and
>>>so justify a claim that some work of art was "better" than another...
>>
>>If, then, the "rate of transfer" is a quantifier of "value", then a modem 
>>tone should outdo a Bruckner symphony or a choral work by Arvo Part. This
>>is certainly specious reasoning. And on what basis was the "greatness" of
>>the conductor determined? Was Toscanini "greater" than Furtwangler? Is
>>Matisse a "greater" artist than Brughel? Is haiku "not as great" as Eliot? 
>>Too many subjectivities to base an "objective" reading on. 
>>
>I have always felt that information theory does not get interesting until you
>get past the Shannon entropy metric and start getting into serious problems of
>coding.  Certainly the one time I heard Shannon talk, most of the talk was
>based on various tricks by which you could milk all sorts of effect out of
>only a few bits of communications bandwidth.  (This is still a popular subject
>when you consider the current work in video compression.)  What makes all these
>tricks work is the assumption that the receiver does not need all the bits of
>the message.  Put another way, if the receive can make some set of expectations
>about what the sender is going to transmit, then the sender only has to
>transmit the bits that matter;  and the receiver can fill in the rest.

>What does this have to do with aesthetics?  My own claim is that it is rather
>important.  We tend to approach our aesthetic experiences with expectations
>(just like everything else in the world from ordering food in Roger Schank's
>favorite restaurant to the literary etiquette we anticipate in these messages).
>There is a good example of this in an early scene of Peter Shaffer's AMADEUS.
>Mozart has just arrived at Joseph's court, and Salieri has composed a march to
>welcome him.  After all the formalities are over and Salieri offers him the
>manuscript, Mozart claims that he has already memorized it.  He sits down at
>the keyboard, rattles off the first eight measures or so, and then says, "It's
>all just the same from here on, isn't it?"  The point is that Mozart knew
>enough about how that sort of music was being written that he only had to
>pick up a few bits (literally as well as figuratively) from Salieri to have
>enough information to reproduce the whole composition.  This also explains
>that old saw about Mozart's music having "too many notes."  Any critic who
>voiced that complaint was basically objecting to having to cope with more
>bits than his listening mind could tolerate.  The bit rate was high because
>Mozart was NOT conforming to the expectations of his time, making the music
>"harder" to listen to.  (We do not appreciate it because we are bombarded with
>so much Mozart from birth that we have a different set of expectations.  For us
>most of the bits come performances which basically upset expectations etched
>into our memory by listening to the same performance over and over again.)

Music is perhaps the premier example of this phenomenon (expectation etc.)
Classical music, probably western music in general, is largely a crafted
art, depending upon *learned* patterns and formats for its appreciation. We
have several centuries of elaboration and exploration of form, rhythm, and
harmony, which in essence *defines* western music. Shannon's measure surely 
cannot account for the difference between a Mozart and a Prokofiev sonata,
or the relative difficulty in appreciating either work. Stephen has put his
finger on it: there has to be an intimate connection between expectation
and signal, with the optimum experience being reached at the point where
novelty and conformance to expectation are nicely balanced.

...[ ]...

>I would argue that this approach works even for the ultimate REDUCTIO AD
>ABSURDUM, John Cage's 4'33".  

I've always thought that 4'33'' was Cage's finest work, and hoped he would
spend more of his time in this vein. Imagine the stupendous 1h 17' 29''
for orchestra, organ and chorus, in b flat. I contend its premiere would
rival that of The Rite of Spring.

Regards,
       Heiner biesel@thrall.sim.es.com


