The Uncanny Muse: Music, Art, and Machines from Automata to AI

Machines have been inspiring human creativity ever since the technological advancements of the Enlightenment “transformed... the Western world,” according to this hit-or-miss history. Exploring how machines have shaped “our communication through art,” journalist Hajdu (Positively Fourth Street) discusses a Victorian-era automaton named Zoe that purported to draw people’s portraits (it was actually operated by a man hidden under the stage on which it sat); a 1927 exhibition in Manhattan that showcased motorboat propellers, radio sets, and other devices at “the intersection of art and machines”; Andy Warhol’s machine reproduction tools, including silk screens; and AI programs that churn out proficient if generic music and visual art. Running beneath this history, Hajdu finds a perpetual clash between reactionaries who view every innovation as a terrifying dehumanization of art and those who celebrate its creative potential. He’s at his most convincing when exploring how technology helps humans channel their creativity in new ways, as when he explains that the radio brought performers “singing softly, naturally, with the tonalities and inflections of ordinary speech... to listeners alone in the privacy of their homes.” Too often, however, the narrative gets mired in circular ruminations on the metaphysics of information technology (“How can a computer sound like itself?” wonders techno-theorist George Lewis. “How do human beings sound like themselves?”). It’s an intermittently insightful treatment of a timely topic. (Feb.)