Music and the Mechanical Mind

Available for 28 days

The possibilities and dangers of Artificial Intelligence is one of the major issues of the day, but for centuries people have imagined machines that could think, able to create and possibly even enjoy art, so we feature early fictional examples of mechanical minds from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Thea Von Harbou's Metropolis, and automata like a moving sculpture of a silver swan and what was known as the 'talking Turk' We consider the limits of art created by computers in poetry by Adrienne Rich and musings from Nick Cave. And our playlist features pianola recordings from Rex Lawson, alongside a reading from HG Wells's Tono-Bungay in which the player piano assists romance, but we also make space for music very much outside of the world of the machine, such as Benjamin Britten’s ode to country life and honest hard work, The Useful Plough The readers are Annette Badland and Daniel Millar Produced in Salford by Jessica Treen