Naturalistic and non-naturalistic renderings in new music

Abstract

If in paintings or fiction, naturalistic (e.g. being close to reality) and non-naturalistic (e.g. unrealness) renderings may seem trivial to define, what do naturalistic or non-naturalistic renderings sound like in music? I discuss the uncertainties related to these notions in the context of New Music and the arts in general. The notions of JNH (Just Noticeably Human) and JNI (Just Noticeably Inhuman) developed by composer Steven Takasugi are also discussed in this context. More specifically, my discussion arose from a concert given in the Black Box at Concordia University on November 23 2023, where three pieces composed by Canadian composer Philon Nguyen using Artificial Intelligence (AI), with varying degrees of human intervention, were performed by 8 musicians and a conductor. The AI was also developed by the composer. Following the performance and rehearsals, different aspects of machine generated materials (in the sense of Adorno's Materialtheorie) were discussed with the musicians and researchers involved in the project. I discuss these in this paper and provide a simple tentative quantitative investigation of the differences between human performances (meant to humanize machine generated materials) and digital AI simulations.