Algorithms in Music: Blessing or Curse?

摘要

This thesis investigates how algorithms affect the way we perceive music, challenging certain existing approaches as well as offering new ones. Since the early nineteenth century, music has been historically viewed as art---an ostensibly human activity. Recently, anxieties about technology have destabilized the surety of this westernized Romantic ideology of music. In this thesis, I look at differing perspectives on algorithms in music composition and recommendation (e.g., Spotify), as well as examine our evaluation of them.;Although algorithms are often maligned for their apparent inhumanness (i.e., their lack of human expression, bias, and agency), their presence in music composition, evaluation (e.g., reviews, online discussions, etc.), and recommendation simply obfuscates the actual extent and significance of human involvement in these processes, on both the creation and reception sides. Some sources acknowledge similar ideas, yet each fails to offer an explanation as to why there is still growth in the criticism and anxiety of algorithms in music. This thesis partially fills this gap in scholarship by explaining that the hiddenness and opacity of algorithms, among other factors, is chiefly responsible for the alarm of many, causing misperceptions of algorithms in music.