Music was brought to humans by gods, ritual chants were received from animal spirits, or voices of the deceased are channeled through the voice of a gifted singer. Artificial intelligence is at the point of composing or even performing (at least, producing) music in formats that sound – for some genres – perfectly similar to humanly composed pieces.
Musings about non-human agency in music are probably as old as human discourse on music. Pondering the possibility of non-human music (made by birds, or by algorithms) is however tied to the question how ‘music’ is defined in human terms. In this talk I will present some examples of sonic creations by computers, animals, plants, outer space bodies, and spirits or gods in order to discuss whether music is something essentially human or not. Maybe, obtaining different perspectives on the phenomena yields different, even contradictory results.
"(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics" is an interdisciplinary project funded by the FWF, hosted by the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, the Kunstuniversität Graz and the University of Vienna.
Please visit the project website for more information and regular updates about project events and activities:
https://improv-ethics.net