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“Does not compute”? Music as real-time communicative interaction

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Abstract

Mainstream operationalisations of music in contemporary digital culture tend to take forms that fit with Western folk-theoretic conceptions of music: as discrete sonic entities—songs, pieces, works—that fall within an autonomous domain of human experience, that have determinate structure and that have both affective and exchange value. This perspective is problematised in alternative digital manifestations of music as constituted in and through interaction, in which music is emergent from interactive processes that are computationally mediated. This alternative digital approach fits with broad conceptions of music that are grounded in ethnomusicological accounts and that have increasing weight in the cognitive sciences, in which music is understood and explored as a communicative medium. This paper will outline some of the possibilities, potentials and problems for digital approaches that are likely to arise in operationalising music as communicative interaction.

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Notes

  1. An exception can be found in those situations where music is co-opted as a means for the assertion of within-group identity that may be directed at out-groups; a common example in western European societies is the use of chanting by rival groups of football fans. Here, it could be argued that football chants are "musical" only insofar as they serve to coordinate collective verbal behaviour that is directed aggressively towards opposing supporters. However, some chants do co-opt existing songs which may become emblematic for particular groups of supporters and these may come to be directed towards bonding with fellow supporters as much as they are intended as a hostile group display directed towards fans of rival clubs (as in the use of the song "You'll never walk alone" by fans of Liverpool F. C.).

  2. This notion of musical "common ground" differs somewhat from that proposed by Murray-Rust and Smaill (2011, p. 1706) who define "…as musical common ground—the set of values which an agent reasonably believes to have been extracted by every other agent, and hence to be common knowledge." This definition of common ground seems to require a more exhaustive and explicit awareness of the "cultural context" than appears likely to be operational in any real-world musical interaction, though that comprehensiveness and particularity may be required by the specification of a particular computational system for human–computer musical interaction.

  3. Given the intrinsically cooperative nature of musical interaction, what would appear to be the antonym of align—disalign—is rejected here in favour of realign; disalignment would be indicative of a refusal to engage or to continue to participate in a musical interaction.

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  1. Centre for Music and Science, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, UK

    Ian Cross

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Cross, I. “Does not compute”? Music as real-time communicative interaction. AI & Soc 28, 415–430 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-013-0511-x

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