The watchmaker

To get special results you need special tools, and the more sophisticated the tools, the more sophisticated the result can be. Most people are using technology to do things that humans can already do, just much faster. I'm interested in things that computers can do, that I can't do easily or at all, that let me extend my creativity into areas that I couldn't otherwise access or even fully visualize. It's not unlike building a bathysphere to visit the ocean depths. What's down there? How can we be sure if we can't get there?

I find people are surprisingly resistant to the idea of co-creating with AI, but I'm convinced it's the future of art. I see it as just another stage in our evolution into cyborgs, as we extend our ability to manipulate our environment by building increasingly powerful and sophisticated tools. Musicians sometimes get upset when I say that music has co-evolved with technology, but it's obvious: a piano is a machine, and couldn't have been properly manufactured before the 18th century because the necessary machining skills didn't exist yet. Same with modern brass instruments, the valves and curves of which require ferociously complex math and engineering skill that evolved with steam engine technology.

Even though I've sometimes used it, I'm always suspicious of randomness as a method of generating variety in art and music, because the essence of artistic expression is intention, and true randomness is inherently unintentional. The beauty of polymeter as a means of generating variety is that it's non-random, i.e. completely intentional. It also captures a key aspect of our biological reality, right down to the mechanics of cells and enzymes: myriad clocks, all cycling while maintaining precise phase relationships with each other. Wheels within wheels within wheels. When I'm composing polymeter, I sometimes imagine myself as a watchmaker: not Richard Dawkin's blind watchmaker, but the Victorian kind, staring through a huge magnifying glass to turn tiny screws that would otherwise be invisible. Victorian watchmakers needed special tools, and I do too.