About This Album

A decade before generative AI emerged, Art by Machine was one of the first albums composed and substantially produced by an artificial intelligence. The album was created by a computer program named Oldfield 1 which I developed as an experimental addition to my music software, Prometheus. The music Oldfield 1 has created here is largely indistinguishable from music created by a human, although it has a somewhat odd and repetitive nature.

For each track, a selection of instruments is provided to the program, with a selection of possible pitches and possible timings. The program applies these across each track independently; bass, drums, lead etc. choosing different options for the start of a pattern, the middle, and the end. As Oldfield 1 is a subsystem of a studio-quality synthesizer and sequencer, it has the power to create a high quality song in a single click with minimal need for external processing.

Musically, Oldfield 1 creates repeating melodic structures that fit into chord sequences that are known to fit together in a pleasing way. The music is akin to a geometrical abstract artwork, perhaps the audio embodiment of Piet Mondrian or Kandinsky.

Art By Machine
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Art By Machine
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