Science Gets Down With Miles Davis and Bernini
This month, in our article, “Literature by the Numbers,” we introduced you to scholars using digital tools to uncover fresh historical and critical insights into fiction, poetry, and plays. To the chagrin of their old-school colleagues, the IBM Watson-era scholars are showing how computer analysis can uncover new meanings in the works of masters like Shakespeare. Digital research, though, doesn’t stop with literature. This week we reached out to scholars in music and sculpture for further insights into how digital tools illuminate art, music, and creativity.
Anna Jordanous, research associate at the Center for e-Research at King’s College London, explained how she programmed a computer “to be creative” and “compose” music. Tony Sigel, conservator of objects and sculpture at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, the conservation wing of Harvard University’s art museums, informed us how science is shining new light on Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whose magnificent sculptures, such as The Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, have enraptured anybody who has been to Rome.
How can a computer be programmed to be creative?
One approach to creative computing is to give a computer a
