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"Rethinking the A and I of AI: Of Music, Mind, Machine, and Mechanism" In a 1991 conversation with Otto Laske about music and machines, Marvin Minsky proposes a restraint: "When I write about some mechanism of intelligence or learning, I try not to use words like 'intelligence' and 'learning'—except in the title or summary." What does Minsky want by isolating these terms, and what remains to write about? The answer is mechanism—a mechanism of mind to generate music with or without a machine. The relationship between music, mind, mechanism, and machine is my subject. Taking a genealogical approach, I trace the promotion and demotion of words for "intelligence" and "learning," separating productive tensions from extreme anxieties surrounding what humanity has invented. I keep returning to Minsky's opening line about terms and titles, reaching my reading of the Laske conversation only at the end. At stake is music's mediation through production: its ways of being sounded out by a body, instrument, or processor. When music sounds, it floats or streams. Floating connotes a freedom of movement borne on the wings of song; streaming today suggests a standardized spread. From the imaginary museum of musical works, we arrive at the museum without walls, to ask what remains, if anything, of music's extension c[h]ords.
Lydia Goehr is Fred and Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. Her books include The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (1992); The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy (1998); Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory (2008); Red Sea–Red Square–Red Thread: A Philosophical Detective Story (2021); and David Lean: Filmmaker and Philosopher (2025). She co-edited The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera with Daniel Herwitz and A Companion to Arthur C. Danto with Jonathan Gilmore. Goehr has published widely on Theodor W. Adorno, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Arthur Danto. Her research focuses on German aesthetic theory and the relationships among philosophy, politics, history, music, and the arts.
Moderator: Marlies De Munck
Location: Meeting Room Block L, Royal Conservatoire Antwerp.
Hybrid event: Lydia Goehr will be present through video conference.
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Desguinlei 25, 2018 Antwerp, Belgium, Desguinlei 26, 2018 Antwerpen, België, Antwerp, Belgium
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