Nineflick

Some time last year I wrote a post on deconstructing music.

Objectivizing taste remains sort of a pet philosophical quandary for me. I do not have a strongly analytical or artistic mind, so my left and right brains tend to have at it each other, Black Knight from Monty Python-style. The notion that taste, traditionally a purely subjective concept, can be given a more rational framework is one lovechild from this unholy mental union. Though it may be the result of two orthogonal entities warring against each other, I think it has a certain rational basis.

Consider – there is a shared realm of psychology that we all might agree to call “sanity.” Because of our psychological gestalts, there is a fundamental sharing of value. These values are not only based on the basic psychological constructs we use to understand our universe, but the physical limitations of our bodies. High C may be such a powerful note, for example, because of its similarity to the human cry.

If the “value” or impact of notes can be reduced to a common currency, so too could more complex melodies. In the previous entry, I suggested there are many musical progressions that follow similar patterns, and propose classifying them to understand them. Good music is, for lack of a better way to put it, a “good pattern” – a structure from which the ear can discern regularity and extrapolate meaning. There is probably some kind of consistency between the feelings experienced and the mathematical relationship of the notes.

This all sounds pretty good (to me, right now, anyway), but if the fundamental premise holds true, how could we begin to assign objective value to, say, a song? After all, the human mind is fickle, especially when it comes to matters of opinion. I think at least two basic principles would be fundamental towards achieving this goal:

1) It’s my belief that there is an absolute way to define taste for any individual. By exposing the individual to enough forms of art enough times, the person would gradually converge on his/her absolute taste preferences (ATP?) The purpose of exposing the person to enough forms of art enough times would be to eliminate arbitrary opinions due to limited exposure of particular styles (or, conversely, excessive familiarity with preferred styles). From a practical standpoint, I think many people (myself included) would find their tastes in music shift radically if they were exposed to a lot more of it. By adjusting for individual experiences, we could approach that true base level.

2) In forming value judgments, the mind does not effectively juggle many ideas simultaneously. If a person is asked to listen to 50 songs and then rank them from most to least favorite, inevitable “mistakes” will be made. The person might feel quite strongly that the #5 ranked song is better than the #6 ranked song, and the #6 is better than the #7, but believe the #7 is better than the #5. Thus, in determining artistic value, a bubble sort technique could be used. This way the person would be asked to judge two items side by side, reducing the chance of overall inconsistency. (I believe this technique is already used in psychology under a different name, but since I’m a computer scientist I think of it as bubble sorting.)

By following these two principles, I think we could begin to understand an individual’s true level of artistic taste, eliminating some of the arbitrary complexities imposed by the human brain. At that point we could begin to sift for consistencies and underlying patterns, and understand taste in a more analytical form. We could even start to apply economic concepts to the results: for instance, I’d suggest artistic value could be “discounted” to bring them on level with the current artistic environment, adjusting for the impacts of innovation on overall quality.

All this may not sound very fun, but besides reductionism for the sake of reductionism, I believe there is a lot to be gained by understanding art on a more objective basis. The arts have a way of continually reinventing themselves, even when it seems “it’s all been done;” what better way to push forward than through the fundamentally human need to understand things better?