Complex to the ear but simple to the mind (Nicholas J Hudson)<\/a><\/p>\nAbstract:<\/span><\/p>\nBackground: The biological origin of music, its universal appeal across human cultures and the cause of its beauty<\/span>
\nremain mysteries. For example, why is Ludwig Van Beethoven considered a musical genius but Kylie Minogue is<\/span>
\nnot? Possible answers to these questions will be framed in the context of Information Theory.<\/span>
\nPresentation of the Hypothesis: The entire life-long sensory data stream of a human is enormous. The adaptive<\/span>
\nsolution to this problem of scale is information compression, thought to have evolved to better handle, interpret<\/span>
\nand store sensory data. In modern humans highly sophisticated information compression is clearly manifest in<\/span>
\nphilosophical, mathematical and scientific insights. For example, the Laws of Physics explain apparently complex<\/span>
\nobservations with simple rules. Deep cognitive insights are reported as intrinsically satisfying, implying that at some<\/span>
\npoint in evolution, the practice of successful information compression became linked to the physiological reward<\/span>
\nsystem. I hypothesise that the establishment of this \u201ccompression and pleasure\u201d connection paved the way for<\/span>
\nmusical appreciation, which subsequently became free (perhaps even inevitable) to emerge once audio<\/span>
\ncompression had become intrinsically pleasurable in its own right.<\/span>
\nTesting the Hypothesis: For a range of compositions, empirically determine the relationship between the<\/span>
\nlistener\u2019s pleasure and \u201clossless\u201d audio compression. I hypothesise that enduring musical masterpieces will possess<\/span>
\nan interesting objective property: despite apparent complexity, they will also exhibit high compressibility.<\/span>
\nImplications of the Hypothesis: Artistic masterpieces and deep Scientific insights share the common process of<\/span>
\ndata compression. Musical appreciation is a parasite on a much deeper information processing capacity. The<\/span>
\ncoalescence of mathematical and musical talent in exceptional individuals has a parsimonious explanation. Musical<\/span>
\ngeniuses are skilled in composing music that appears highly complex to the ear yet transpires to be highly simple<\/span>
\nto the mind. The listener\u2019s pleasure is influenced by the extent to which the auditory data can be resolved in the<\/span>
\nsimplest terms possible.<\/span><\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
Interesting, but it is way too short on data. its not that difficult to acquire som data to test this hypothesis. varius open source lossless compressors ar freely available, im thinking particularly of FLAC compressors. then one needs a juge library of music, and som sort of ranking of the music related to the quality of it. if the hypothesis is correct, then the best music shud com out on top, at least relativly within genres, or within bands etc. i think i will test this myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was researching a different topic and came across this paper. I was rewatching the Everything is a remix series. Then i looked up som mor relevant links, and came across these videos. One of them mentioned this article. Complex to the ear but simple to the mind (Nicholas J Hudson) Abstract: Background: The biological […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1766,1653],"tags":[1763],"class_list":["post-3511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math-science","category-psychology","tag-memetics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3511"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3514,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3511\/revisions\/3514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}