Microworlds+and+Music

=Microworlds and Music=

Midterm Wiki Page
By: Matt Carroll

__What is a Microworld?__
Computers have helped develop many new ways of looking at the world. One of the new ways to look at and explore different parts of this world is called a “microword.” Seymour Papert created idea of a microworld in the late 1960s. This microworld was created to help children understand and tinker with different geometry concepts. Papert believed that computers microworlds could develop environments where children could “think about thinking.” (Bull, 2005) The first real computer program where the idea of microworlds developed was a programming language called Logo. In this microworld, children were give a “screen turtle,” through programming, was able to create squares and other geometric shapes.



Out of this microworld, Papert theorized that not only children could use this to learn, but also this could be a way for people to explore and develop new ideas and theories and test them. (Bull, 2005) From this idea, the concept of a microworld is way to research or learn about a concept or theory by exploring a small system (hence the name “microworld”) that is completely closed off from the environment. (Desain & Honing, 1988) Since it is completely closed off, all the research and exploration must come from the tools available to the user that is inside this “microworld.” In the example of the “screen turtles,” the children were given basic commands (or tools) such as “Forward” and “Right.” This allowed the children to create a routine that created a square (Figure 1) then this square routine could be called multiple times to make complex objects (Figure 2). (Bull, 2005) From these basic tools, many different types of shapes could be created and explored inside this microworld.

__Ok, That’s Great, So Where Does Music Fit In?__
Though Logo was created to teach children math, geometry and problem solving it has been expanded in many different ways. One of these ways is a program called LOCO. LOCO is a program written inside of Logo which allowed for multiple types of music composition microworlds. These microworlds were designed in the same way Logo’s screen turtle was designed: basic tools that can be used to create larger, stronger tools. (Desain & Honing, 1988) By using these supplied and created tools, the computer was able to create different types of scores and compositions with the given knowledge that is inherent to the microworld. With only have a few tools at the user’s disposal, they were required to learn how to create tool they need to make the composition work. Once the computer created the composition, the user had to make his or her own decision on the “musical value” of the choices they made. (Desain & Honing, 1988) By forcing the user to create the tools and then evaluate the choice of tools, the user is completely immersed in the composition and the microworld. Through this immersion, the user is given a new way to think about a problem or composition thus giving them new insight on how to come up a solution. (Desain, 1993)

__What Can Microworlds Teach Us About Music?__
In the article Chaos in A Major (Dewdney, 1993), Author Davison created his version of a microworld to create music chaotically called CHAOS IN A MAJOR (aka CHAOS-A). The application used a basic logistic equation to create the chaos. Through this “chaos music,” he tries to learn connections and patterns to the chaos. This program could be modified just as any microworld. These modifications make the program more useful to learn from. This is just one example of many that microworlds can be used to learn about some sort of musical phenomena. Microworlds are a limitless tool for research and learning. Users can create their own musical experiment inside a microworld, and by “playing around” and developing new musical experiments, the users can learn new insights on how to ask questions and think about existing questions.

__Microworld Music vs. Human Music__
LOCO and CHAOS-A were both created to explore music AND to help create it. LOCO does a great job at helping users explore music whereas CHAOS-A does a great job at creating it. In the Dewdney article, some people even thought that the music created by CHAOS-A was a Philip Glass piece. What I’m interested in finding out is: at what point can we determine the difference between a composition created by a human or a composition created by a machine? Is there a defining factor between how a human writes a piece of music and how a machine writes a piece of music? Or, at this point, is there anyway to separate the two? With microworlds, the human creates the tools to make the music, but the machine still generates it. So, can we discern the difference between the two?

Readings (Note some readings require connection to [|UCSD Proxy]): [|Bull, G. (2005). Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas] [|Desain, P. & Honing, H. (1988). LOCO: A Compositional Microworld in Logo] [|Honing, H. (1993). A Microworld Approach to the Formalization of Musical Knowledge]

Interesting Additional Reading: Dewdney, A. K. (1993). Chaos in A Major (Reader, p. 105) [|Graci, Craig. Exploring Cognitive Musicology with Microworld Technology]