[LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)

[Niels Mayer]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Chris Cannam
<cannam at all-day-breakfast.com> wrote:
> I think the point Neils has is just that the outcome of your noodling
> is somewhat independent of your explicit intention.  Notes that sound
> satisfying together are probably going to sound satisfying largely
> because of some intrinsic mathematical relationship, or at least
> something that is probably open to analysis to some extent but that
> you don't yourself understand or plan.

testify(wordUp); /*Chris, thanks for clarifying my point!*/

Consider how the snowflake, the mountain, coastlines, leaves and
trees, whose shapes "put the cart before the horse" of the mathematics
of  fractals: http://www.ams.org/notices/201001/rtx100100010p.pdf (the
most mind-blowing AMS paper i've read so far: is DNA and life itself
"shaped" fractally in the same way time and erosion sculpts a
mountain?).

nature "put the cart before the horse" of analog
synthesizers/computers when it made the sounds in the link below,
without ever conceiving of operational-amplifiers:
http://boingboing.net/2010/01/17/cracking-ice-sheets.html

Last time I was thinking about this in public, I said:

> The other thing that would be interesting is to explore the
> intersection between fractal self-similarities and rhythm/melody. Is
> music, and that which sounds musical "fractal" in nature, much like
> when we see something and instantly identify "tree" or "mountain" or
> "coastline" because of their fractal nature? Do we appreciate when
> music is more fractal, versus being a kind of latticework, infinite
> pattern, or just a random potpourri of sounds strung together for no
> purpose?

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com