Helpful notes on bulk downloading from Archive.org

• https://gareth.halfacree.co.uk/2013/04/bulk-downloading-collections-from-archive-org
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/internetarchive

Much easier to work with a compiled ia rather than the python version (which I couldn't get to work anyhow).

Future philology

A very interesting and enjoyable Skype with Elenea Pierazzo at KCL left me with lots to think about, and links to all sorts of digital projects that I was unaware of or only half-aware of previously, including

• Interedition
• Gregor Middell's work on Juxta etc.
• Tanya Clement's work on Juxta etc.
• Digital Resource for Palaeography
• The various projects at the Huygens Institute in DH (here).
• The work of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (http://ests2012.huygens.knaw.nl/)
• Textualscholarship.nl
• http://www.e-laborate.nl/en/
• Edward Vanhoutte's work

Iamus and Intentionality

In the article "Iamus, classical music's computer composer, live from Malaga" (in the Online Guardian), Philip Ball describes the computer program Iamus that is emerging as a disturbing presence in the field of modern classical music. While discussing how we seek for authorial meaning and significance music, he asks,

How does a performer interpret these pieces, given that there's no "intention" of the composer to look for? "Suppose I found a score in a library without knowing who wrote it," says Díaz-Jerez. "I approach these pieces as I would that one – by analysing the score to see how it works." In that respect, he sees no difference from deducing the structure of a Bach fugue.

You can compare it with computer chess, says the philosopher of music Stephen Davies, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand. "People said computers wouldn't be able to show the same original thinking, as opposed to crunching random calculations. But now it's hard to see the difference between people and computers with respect to creativity in chess. Music, too, is rule-governed in a way that should make it easily simulated."

This reminds me strongly of the discussion that took place amongst Mīmāṃsaka philosophers in India about the possibility of a injunctive force being exerted by a scripture having no author and therefore no inherent intentionality (see, e.g., John Taber on this topic).

What would a Mīmāṃsaka say about computer-generated music?  Or computer-generated scripture, for that matter?

And can you tell human- and computer-generated music apart?  Take this test :-)