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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2287/short6.pdf
To play with feeling?
The opportunity of aesthetics in
computational musical creativity
Geraint A. Wiggins
AI Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium &
Electronic Engineering & Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Introduction The research field of Computational Creativity (CC) has been de-
fined as “The philosophy, science and engineering of computational systems
which, by taking on particular responsibilities, exhibit behaviours that unbi-
ased observers would deem to be creative.” [3, §1] CC research is not restricted
to artistic activities (e.g., mathematics is included), but artistic domains distin-
guish it most from conventional Artificial Intelligence (AI), partly because they
position CC closer to questions about aesthetic consciousness. In this position
paper, I argue for music as an object of scientific study, arguing that it is an
ideal domain for both CC and machine consciousness research.
What is music? Music comprises many distinct aspects. Babbitt [1] proposes
three representational domains for music: graphemic (notated); acoustic (physi-
cal); auditory (cognitive). Affective response resides in the auditory domain.
Babbitt’s domains help describe musical operations [13]. The auditory is priv-
ileged: absit musical intelligence, moving from the graphemic to the acoustic
entails literal recording and playback. Where a human is involved, the audi-
tory mediates: performing a musical score entails cognition [13, 12]. From a CC
perspective, excluding the auditory entails triviality.
Further, music’s syntactic forms are defined and constructed by perceptual
and cognitive processes [13, 12, 14]: listening and memory. Musical syntax is com-
plex, multidimensional, and deeply hierarchical. Music uses reference in ways
similar to anaphora in language. But music is usually self-contained: it hardly
ever refers directly to things that are non-musical.
What does music mean? Syntactic features of music have direct psychomotor
effects: music makes people want to move—but the effect is subtle, and related to
timing in language [8, 6]. Humans enjoy and actively seek the engagement out,
even when the emotion is (superficially) negative [9]. We distinguish between
affect suggested to, and affect felt by, a listener [11]; music suggests an interesting
ability to be affected by something and to simultaneously reflect on that effect.
Music differs from language, in that it has no propositional, compositional
semantics: it makes no statements about the world. It is thus a closed system,
referring to itself [4], conveying affective connotation, but not epistemic content.
Consciousness Therefore, music affords a unique opportunity to study cognitive
effects that are directly related to conscious experience, without the baggage of
general knowledge that cognitive science generally carries. Specifically,
– syntactic effects seem to engage entrainment and thus affective response [6];
– syntactic and semiotic effects seem to directly engage affective response [5];
– powerful expectations are generated, which are sometimes describable by
conscious awareness, and which engage affective response [10];
2 Geraint A. Wiggins
– conscious and non-conscious awareness of the meta-level seems common-
place: dynamic expectation is a major factor in musical experience [8, 7].
Relatively little work on music is available in machine consciousness studies [2].
Such work would be a true symbiosis: music affords a purpose-built laboratory
in which consciousness studies can cut directly to the mechanisms; consciousness
studies afford detailed understanding of aesthetics (qua “feelings”) which are not
normally available for consideration in music theory.
References
1. Babbitt, M.: The use of computers in musicological research. Perspectives of New
Music 3(2), 74–83 (1965)
2. Chella, A.: A cognitive architecture for music perception exploiting conceptual
spaces. In: Applications of Conceptual Spaces: The Case for Geometric Knowledge
Representation, pp. 187–203. No. 359 in Synthese Library, Springer (2015)
3. Colton, S., Wiggins, G.A.: Computational creativity: The final frontier? In:
de Raedt, L., Bessiere, C., Dubois, D., Doherty, P. (eds.) Proceedings of ECAI
Frontiers (2012). https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-098-7-21
4. Deliège, I.: Grouping conditions in listening to music: An approach to Lerdahl and
Jackendoff’s grouping preference rules. Music Perception 4, 325–360 (1987)
5. Egermann, H., Pearce, M.T., Wiggins, G.A., McAdams, S.: Probabilistic
models of expectation violation predict psychophysiological emotional re-
sponses to live concert music. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neu-
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13415-013-0161-y
6. Forth, J., Agres, K., Purver, M., Wiggins, G.A.: Entraining IDyOT: timing in
the information dynamics of thinking. Frontiers in Psychology 7, 1575 (2016).
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01575
7. Gingras, B., Pearce, M.T., Goodchild, M., Dean, R.T., Wiggins, G., McAdams,
S.: Linking melodic expectation to expressive performance timing and perceived
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formance 42(4), 594 (2016)
8. Huron, D.: Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Bradford
Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2006)
9. Juslin, P., Sloboda, J.: Handbook of music and emotion: theory, research, appli-
cations. Affective Science, Oxford University Press (2010)
10. Pearce, M.T., Wiggins, G.A.: Auditory expectation: The information dynamics of
music perception and cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science 4(4), 625–652 (2012).
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01214.x
11. Wiggins, G.A.: Music, syntax, and the meaning of “meaning”. In: Proceedings
of the First Symposium on Music and Computers. pp. 18–23. Ionian University,
Corfu, Greece (1998)
12. Wiggins, G.A., Müllensiefen, D., Pearce, M.T.: On the non-existence of music:
Why music theory is a figment of the imagination. Musicae Scientiae Discussion
Forum 5, 231–255 (2010)
13. Wiggins, G.A.: Semantic Gap?? Schemantic Schmap!! Methodological
considerations in the scientific study of music. In: Proceedings of 11th
IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia. pp. 477–482 (2009).
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISM.2009.36
14. Wiggins, G.A.: Music, mind and mathematics: Theory, reality and formality. Jour-
nal of Mathematics and Music 6(2), 111–123 (2012)