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Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Perhaps you just have a smaller conception of robots and what they are (or one day could be) capable of, then.
Besides, what is so special about human feelings? They're just the brain's internal perception of automatic emotional processes. What if a robot had a brain that worked like a human's?
My conception of the ultimate android is one whose brain is like a human's. A device that could learn and memorize by itself without being programmed, and would lend itself to the development of real personality through the gradual gathering of information and memories through its life and experiences. It may even have the capacity for emotional perception built right in...
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Performing music is incredibly complex. The sheer amount of physical reactions that occur when preparing to perform and actualy performing are incredible. Trust me - I am in a conservatory for piano performance.
Emotions (tempered with logic and discipline of course) are everything when it comes to music. Even such things as anxiety and nerves before performing factor into what makes the performance what it is. Before you perform, you get a rush - a very real emotional response with actual physical, flesh and blood reactions. Adrenaline is running thorugh your veins. Your entire state is heightened. Once again, those physical effects, as well as your ability to control them, play a large part in a performance.
Then there is such things as human error - rushing the tempo a bit because you are drawn into it, or not counting 128th notes precisely. In order for a robot to be able to perform like a human - to perform with the same sincerity and gravity of a human - it would have to be imperfect. Furthermore, it would have to be able to distinguish between a mistake and artistic freedom - when are you required to count the 128th notes strictly, and when can you take some liberty with it? And when you do take liberty, how much time should you take? Should you then speed up to close the phrase contigiously, or should you change the character and make it something different?
Give me a recording of a computer and a recording of a human and I can tell you with 100% accuracy which is which every single time, even if every single little dynamic marking in the score is followed by the computer.
Further, it would have to have the same flesh and blood that we do - and have absolutely identical reactions to external stimulus. How can you program stage anxiety into a robot? How can you program in the sensation of losing yourself in the music?
And the biggest challenge of all - interpretation. How in the world can a robot choose what is the "tasteful" amount of rubato, when there is no true "correct" amount to program in? What about phrasing? What about bringing out the subject in a five voice fugue while keeping all of the voices the same dynamic level, showing each voice only by color and tone changes?
A robot may well one day be able to play each and every marking in the score accurately, and even make some mistakes on purpose to sound more human. But it will never be able to achieve the imperfect organicness of a moving human performance.
Why? Because if it could, if that robot DID have the faculty to do so - was coded with our identical brain, the flesh and blood, had stage fright, the longing to communicate with others....it wouldn't really be a robot anymore, would it?
