[Trombone-l] Asimo conducts Detroit

[Howard Spindel]

I have to agree with Dan here.

As a former programmer (for 30 years), I'm glad to hear Dan say that 
the art was in the design and programming of Asimo.  Too often 
programming is viewed as engineering and fairly mechanical in nature, 
whereas I always believed I was creating something artistic when I 
wrote a program.

Did I enjoy listening to what Asimo conducted?  Yes, but probably 
only because the artistic interpretation was originally modeled on a 
real live conductor.  Is this something I'd like to see often?  No - 
I don't want live performances to become mechanized repeatable 
performances.  That's what I have a CD player for.  I want live 
performances to be filled with majestic human playing and fraught 
with human error (or at least the possibility of error).

I am impressed with the programming effort that went into creating 
Asimo.  I'm not impressed that a computer was capable of carrying out 
the instructions those programmers laid down.

Finally, the only robot conductor I'd want to see on a regular basis 
would have to be a conductor that was capable of original thought and 
bringing some new interpretation to the music that had not been heard 
before.  Robots won't do that in my lifetime.

Howard

At 07:21 PM 5/30/2008, Daniel Pliskin wrote:



>We seem to all be missing the point.  It isn't whether the Asimo was 
>mimicking the assistant conductor or whether it could follow the 
>musicians.  It isn't even whether Asimo could be programmed to add 
>an interpretation to the music.  Whatever Asimo does and doesn't do 
>has been programmed into it by a cast of thousands, who decided what 
>was important and what wasn't.  And if that was done well enough, I 
>suppose it could even be called art.  But if thousands of 
>programmers, over all these years of programming robots, have been 
>able to get this thing to "conduct" the orchestra, the art was in 
>the design and programming of Asimo.  Asimo dutifully did what it was told.
>
>Now you have to ask yourself whether you would like to listen to 
>robots doing what they're told or to someone who artfully interprets 
>a piece of music.  Notice I said "listen to".  I have no doubt that 
>this was a great side show.  But was it music and if it was, was it 
>music because of Asimo, or because no matter what Asimo did, that 
>orchestra was going to turn out music, because they're worthy musicians.
>
>I say that this was a side show.  I say that no matter how fast 
>computers get, they're never going to have enough inputs, happening 
>all in parallel or enough parallel processor power to interpret what 
>those inputs mean.  I further say that the more we view education as 
>the ability to pass tests, the more computers are going to be able 
>to compete with humans.  What makes robots so useful is that they 
>don't interpret what they're told to do.  They just do it.  Asimo 
>stood up there and waved its arms in front of an orchestra.  Asimo 
>would have don't the same thing if the orchestra hadn't been 
>there.  Did anyone ask if Asimo could even hear the orchestra?
>
>Furthermore, are we now supposed to believe that caring, sensitive 
>robots are building Hondas for us?  Or was this more like car racing 
>sponsorship.  People are going to watch and you want your billboard 
>to flash on the TV dozens of times during the race, so you sponsor 
>some teams.
>
>I'm not impressed.
>
>DanP
>
>
>
>
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