But on Spotify it appears to be by ROBIN Archer. From all I can find, this is an error introduced w/ a 2013 Trunk Records digital upload. If anyone knows Robin was deliberate, please tell me. In any case, a reminder that streaming metadata is not 100% reliable and errors compound across platforms!
Robert Archer's *Nature's Dream Harp* is a delightful privately released album from 1979 featuring a homemade aeolian harp (that fully acoustic yet oddly electronic-sounding string instrument played by the wind).
zachary cooper, "the innovation paradox"
the point of copyright is theoretically to stimulate innovation, but the more innovation we have the more confused copyright gets--when everyone can turn everything into everything else
#ilwip
What kind of instrument is the Doof Warrior’s guitar in Mad Max Fury Road? I’d call it analogical - bedpan as guitar body, trumpet keys as pickups, neck as flamethrower barrel. Real objects forming an imaginary musical instrument news.northeastern.edu/2026/03/05/m...
Great essay, and wow do I have a new book for you! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
And wow, that’s pretty incredible
Excellent post, highly recommend
To be fair, the authors say the “singularity benign” and “singularity extinction” lines are speculative extremes, and the point is the middle lines. But this is a very haha-crying data visualization to see from a Federal Reserve Bank www.dallasfed.org/research/eco... h/t vergecast @theverge.com
Oh man I wish I could go to this! Looks fantastic
(Imaginary) musical instrument applications: “When shoes slide across a floor, wave-like deformations of the sole can generate squeaking. The pitch of the squeak depends on the rate at which deformations are generated.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Fascinating: “This combination [of 1:1 and 2:1 rhythmic patterns] was only observed in ants and the most ant-dependent caterpillar species, suggesting the two species have evolved a coordinated rhythm pattern driven by their close ecological interaction.” warwick.ac.uk/news/pressre...
Finally read Klara and the Sun, which has been on my list since I heard about it at the “Reading Minds” @litsciarts.org conference several years ago. Notable musical moment: Klara (an Artificial Friend) is asked to sing a harmonic minor scale as a test of her abilities; she opts not to respond
Here’s a Mozart example, and yes mechanical music achieving something other than imitating the human goes back earlier still bsky.app/profile/deir...
I like Owen Marshall’s discussion of this in the autotune patent soundstudiesblog.com/2014/04/21/i...
“I look forward to getting beyond the imitative homogenizing LLM approach and seeing whatever comes next.” Great interview with Laurie Spiegel: www.theverge.com/report/87981...
“e-mail of Theseus” 🚢
In the UK? Lucky you! There’s a pre-order promotion on The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, which book you can hold in your hands in April (in the US we have to wait until July)
Order from Waterstones by Feb 20th w/ code FEB26 for the discount
@reaktionbooks.bsky.social #WPreorder
But @leifw.bsky.social writes excellently about why we should think of it as an art project: “Large language models are storytellers…We must read their fiction as fiction and be literal about where it does and does not influence the technical work they can perform…” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...
So it’s not an art project, as this interview with the creator makes clear www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9vR...
Event info: www.organology.ams-net.org
Book info: reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/the-mus...
Museum: imaginaryinstruments.org
Next week, we’re talking about our virtual museum and forthcoming @reaktionbooks.bsky.social book on imaginary musical instruments. For anyone interested in organology, unrealized technologies, or a cultural history of creative thought.
A snow day is the perfect day to visit the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments and check out our newest addition: a 1927 vision for a gigantic, pipe-organ-sized “polyharp” as the “inevitable transformation of the harp” imaginaryinstruments.org/polyharp/
I disagree with the argument that AI is a cliche machine incapable of leaps or surprise (that’s a design choice), but think we don’t need such a premise to agree with “defending and encouraging the human ambition to make art, unassisted, whether successful or otherwise.” aeon.co/essays/sure-...
Copyedits are in!
Happy public domain day to compositions from 1930 and sound recordings from 1925 web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicd...
For our family kiddos from the West Coast, this is the “Waymo piano” 🤯 🤖
MIDI : digital musical instruments :: MCP : AI agents? www.anthropic.com/news/donatin...
Quantum Arts: the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University seeks an artist-research to join our faculty in quantum arts or the broader area of the arts and unconventional computing. Please share! northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/career...
Songwriter Trannie Anderson — who’s written for Lainey Wilson, Dan + Shay, and Reba McEntire — says the tech is ubiquitous. Though she doesn’t use it herself, she sees wide use “from entry-level songwriters to the top dogs.” She isn’t exaggerating; multiple sources have told me that even stars like Dustin Lynch and Jelly Roll are being sent pitches with their voices artificially generated into demos, something AI voice transfer makes possible. Lynch’s manager Brad Belanger confirmed this, adding, “What a world we’re moving into.” Jelly Roll’s representatives declined to comment on the record.
Major country stars like Jelly Roll are being pitched music with their own voices deepfaked onto the demo tracks, just a small part of how AI tools like Suno have taken over Nashville. Wild piece by @charlieharding.bsky.social for us -> www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
