The came across a machine built around a violin, complete with bow. The machine featured a lot of actuators and a complete lack of any aesthetic sense. At the moment it wasn't doing anything, but the monitor attached to it featured a continuous scroll of code.
"What's it saying?" the human asked.
"I wouldn't call it language," the android said, "but if I'm correctly interpreting the intent behind sharing these specific outputs, its microphones have all failed, rendering it unable to determine if it is playing in key.
"It seems to be quite distressed by this development, and --if I'm interpreting correctly-- is requesting repairs. Repeatedly."
The human nodded at this and then took off its backpack. "Tell it that the new ears I'm giving it, though better than nothing, are pretty crap."
"We have other priorities," the android said.
"Won't take but a minute," the human said while rummaging through the backpack.
"It will take significantly longer than a minute."
"Figure of speech."
"You shall have to educate me, at some point, on the difference between a figure of speech and a baldfaced lie."
"Just make sure it knows to expect low quality replacements," the human said. "I don't want to get its hopes up and then--"
"I do not think that it has hopes."
"I'd rather act like it does when it doesn't than risk acting like it doesn't when it does," the human said, finally seeming to be satisfied the components and tools it had taken from the backpack.
The android ignored the machine's keyboard and connected itself to a port while the human started to work on the machine.
"I have relayed your message," the android said. "It is repeatedly indicating that processes are requesting audio input and receiving none. I note that these processes are discretionary in nature, and there is no reason to run them in the absence of input."
"It wants to hear," the human said.
A few minutes passed in silence.
Finally the human finished working and said, "That should do it, two new ears--"
"Back up communicator microphones are not ears," the android said.
"--and you should be hearing."
The machine responded by playing the violin ensconced within it. What it played conformed to no existing style of music. The note lengths followed no pattern, it exhibited no structure, most of the pitches weren't on any scale, and it certainly didn't have any identifiable time signature.
In the human it evoked and abstract and jumbled sense of joy.
"I think it's happy," the human said.
"That conclusion seems reasonable," the android said.
I have no idea why the human and android are going through the kind of place where one might find a violin bot in need of maintenance. Nor do I know why the android is being snarky.
I was looking at something, and something led to something else, and the somethings kept on piling up until I came across a robot that plays the violin. This, in itself, is nothing new.
The 1910 World's Fair had "self playing violins". In fact it was three violins, each with only one string, that were all played by the machine in which they were mounted. This obviously leaves one with serious questions. Questions like "If this method could only play one string per violin, why didn't you install four fucking violins?"
Questions about playing a four stringed instrument with three strings aside, though, its worth noting that it didn't take long to go from "Let's make a piano into a computer, and have it play songs when fed the right program" to "Let's do that with violins too."
The resulting Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina naturally looks cool, in that "start of the 20th century" way some things do, but at the same time it looks like someone shoved some violins inside a player piano . . . because someone shoved some violins inside a player piano.
Given that the stock market crash completely killed off the player piano industry (higher quality phonographs as well as radios had already wounded the industry), and that the self playing violin existed only as a luxury feature on certain player pianos, the dream of robots that played violin sort of disappeared.
In 2007 Toyota showed the world a robot that plays violin and . . . it doesn't look like a robot that plays violin. It looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a cheap sci-fi movie if the unimaginative prop and/or costume depart were told "this scene calls for a robot that plays violin."
In, apparently, 2015 someone (who was not a backed by a billion dollar company) built a robot that plays violin that looks like a robot that plays violin.
That's what I found myself looking at:
Here's a video. (That links to a portion where it's playing for a bit, if you want an explanation of how it works and such, go back to the beginning.)
And that left me thinking thoughts, some of which led to the above.
Something not featured above was imagining the evolution of player and instrument.
If you want a robot that plays violin, and making it a good violinist is your only concern, there's a lot of ways you can go about that and none of them look particularly humanish.
Imagine that you took that as far as it could go. Multiple generations of refinements, improvements, and innovation until diminishing returns meant there really wasn't much more room to improve.
Then take away the violin (bow too.)
Then, without a violin in mind, have someone design an instrument that takes full advantage of the form and functioning of the robot.
Already we're probably talking about an instrument unlike anything anyone would ever design for a human being. But there's no need to stop there.
No matter how well the new instrument is suited to the robot, if you'd started from scratch with the intention of building a robot to play the new instrument, it probably wouldn't end up like the violin bot. So do that.
Iterate.
What sorts of things do you end up with when the process has been going on for a while? (Both in terms of robot musicians and in terms of the instruments they play.)
I have no idea whatsoever. Seems interesting though.
"What's it saying?" the human asked.
"I wouldn't call it language," the android said, "but if I'm correctly interpreting the intent behind sharing these specific outputs, its microphones have all failed, rendering it unable to determine if it is playing in key.
"It seems to be quite distressed by this development, and --if I'm interpreting correctly-- is requesting repairs. Repeatedly."
The human nodded at this and then took off its backpack. "Tell it that the new ears I'm giving it, though better than nothing, are pretty crap."
"We have other priorities," the android said.
"Won't take but a minute," the human said while rummaging through the backpack.
"It will take significantly longer than a minute."
"Figure of speech."
"You shall have to educate me, at some point, on the difference between a figure of speech and a baldfaced lie."
"Just make sure it knows to expect low quality replacements," the human said. "I don't want to get its hopes up and then--"
"I do not think that it has hopes."
"I'd rather act like it does when it doesn't than risk acting like it doesn't when it does," the human said, finally seeming to be satisfied the components and tools it had taken from the backpack.
The android ignored the machine's keyboard and connected itself to a port while the human started to work on the machine.
"I have relayed your message," the android said. "It is repeatedly indicating that processes are requesting audio input and receiving none. I note that these processes are discretionary in nature, and there is no reason to run them in the absence of input."
"It wants to hear," the human said.
A few minutes passed in silence.
Finally the human finished working and said, "That should do it, two new ears--"
"Back up communicator microphones are not ears," the android said.
"--and you should be hearing."
The machine responded by playing the violin ensconced within it. What it played conformed to no existing style of music. The note lengths followed no pattern, it exhibited no structure, most of the pitches weren't on any scale, and it certainly didn't have any identifiable time signature.
In the human it evoked and abstract and jumbled sense of joy.
"I think it's happy," the human said.
"That conclusion seems reasonable," the android said.
- ~ ∗ ~ -
- ~ ∗ ~ - - ~ ∗ ~ -
- ~ ∗ ~ - - ~ * ⁂ * ~ - - ~ ∗ ~ -
I have no idea why the human and android are going through the kind of place where one might find a violin bot in need of maintenance. Nor do I know why the android is being snarky.
- ~ ∗ ~ -
I was looking at something, and something led to something else, and the somethings kept on piling up until I came across a robot that plays the violin. This, in itself, is nothing new.
The 1910 World's Fair had "self playing violins". In fact it was three violins, each with only one string, that were all played by the machine in which they were mounted. This obviously leaves one with serious questions. Questions like "If this method could only play one string per violin, why didn't you install four fucking violins?"
Questions about playing a four stringed instrument with three strings aside, though, its worth noting that it didn't take long to go from "Let's make a piano into a computer, and have it play songs when fed the right program" to "Let's do that with violins too."
The resulting Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina naturally looks cool, in that "start of the 20th century" way some things do, but at the same time it looks like someone shoved some violins inside a player piano . . . because someone shoved some violins inside a player piano.
Given that the stock market crash completely killed off the player piano industry (higher quality phonographs as well as radios had already wounded the industry), and that the self playing violin existed only as a luxury feature on certain player pianos, the dream of robots that played violin sort of disappeared.
In 2007 Toyota showed the world a robot that plays violin and . . . it doesn't look like a robot that plays violin. It looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a cheap sci-fi movie if the unimaginative prop and/or costume depart were told "this scene calls for a robot that plays violin."
In, apparently, 2015 someone (who was not a backed by a billion dollar company) built a robot that plays violin that looks like a robot that plays violin.
That's what I found myself looking at:
Here's a video. (That links to a portion where it's playing for a bit, if you want an explanation of how it works and such, go back to the beginning.)
And that left me thinking thoughts, some of which led to the above.
Something not featured above was imagining the evolution of player and instrument.
If you want a robot that plays violin, and making it a good violinist is your only concern, there's a lot of ways you can go about that and none of them look particularly humanish.
Imagine that you took that as far as it could go. Multiple generations of refinements, improvements, and innovation until diminishing returns meant there really wasn't much more room to improve.
Then take away the violin (bow too.)
Then, without a violin in mind, have someone design an instrument that takes full advantage of the form and functioning of the robot.
Already we're probably talking about an instrument unlike anything anyone would ever design for a human being. But there's no need to stop there.
No matter how well the new instrument is suited to the robot, if you'd started from scratch with the intention of building a robot to play the new instrument, it probably wouldn't end up like the violin bot. So do that.
Iterate.
What sorts of things do you end up with when the process has been going on for a while? (Both in terms of robot musicians and in terms of the instruments they play.)
I have no idea whatsoever. Seems interesting though.
Feels like without some other unstated constraints, your iterative "violin robot" would very quickly converge on "optimizing" itself into a DAC chip.
ReplyDelete(Not that your idea isn't interesting; but the really curious thing becomes the question of what that extra constraint should be exactly.)