IAMUS - The composer without humanity

Eli
Mar 18, 2017
2 min read

The title of this post need not scare you, IAMUS is not an evil man or a psychopath. That's mostly because IAMUS is not a man. Black and red and looking a little bit like lava and at 70TB big, IAMUS is a 'computer cluster'. That's just a lot of computers all connected with one another to form a kind of super computer.

Even with its metallic body and lack of consciousness (let's assume) IAMUS is the proud (can computers be proud?) composer of not one, but two albums. Opus One was created on the 15th of October 2010 and Hello World! was released on the 15th of October 2011 (this most certainly shows evidence that the 15th of October must be an incredibly creatively productive date in the computing world). It sounds pretty great. IAMUS may not be Bach but for a computer, its doing pretty well for itself. I've been playing guitar since I was 8 and I certainly don't have two albums under my belt so, kudos to IAMUS there.

Not just this, but IAMUS should, theoretically grow and learn. Hello World! should be technically superior to Opus One - whatever that may mean.

The problem is however, do we praise IAMUS of do we praise the researchers at the Universidad de Málaga for having created IAMUS? Or, is it the orchestra that acts out IAMUS' composition? Why do we feel intuitively that they, as humans, deserve recognition but IAMUS, as a mere (yet powerful) computer deserves none? This says something about how we experience aesthetics whether in visual arts, music or literature. We want a human element. We want a relatable aspect to connect our own lives with the art but in a millennial world, isn't technology our reality? Is it not relatable? After all, in order to write this and in order to read this, digital technology was and is, essential.

The philosophical problems surrounding IAMUS and digital creation is a massive field in ethics and aesthetics but why not give a listen to a song off Hello World! and decide for yourself. Do you like it? Who is the artist?