''Iamus'' is the first studio album composed using

Iamus In Greek mythology, Iamus (Ancient Greek: Ἴαμος) was the son of Apollo and Evadne, a daughter of Poseidon, raised by Aepytus. Mythology Evadne loved Apollo and by him she became pregnant, but was shamed by Aepytus for her pregnancy. When ...

, a

computer cluster A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The comp ...

designed by the University of Malaga which creates contemporary classical music. The pieces are composed using melomics computational system, and are entirely computer generated, with no human input.

Overview

The compositions were composed using a genomic process which creates music and converts it to standard musical notation, to be utilized by live musicians for performance and editing. ''Iamus'' is arguably the first complete album to be composed solely by a computer and recorded by human musicians. This has generated a controversial discussion about the nature of artistic expression not only in music, but in many performing and visual arts.

Tom Service Tom Service (born 8 March 1976) is a British writer, music journalist and television and radio presenter, who has written regularly for ''The Guardian'' since 1999 and presented on BBC Radio 3 since 2001. He is a regular presenter of The Proms f ...

, in reference to the piece " Hello World!", stated, "Iamus's Hello World... ought to pose existential questions about the integrity of musical composition, to blow holes in the fallacy that every note a human composer writes comes from a wellspring of emotion and deep thought unique to our consciousness."

Philip Ball Philip Ball (born 1962) is a British science writer. For over twenty years he has been an editor of the journal ''Nature'' for which he continues to write regularly. He now writes a regular column in '' Chemistry World''. He has contributed to ...

, prolific science author, has written a piece on the album in the interdisciplinary science journal ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'', about Iamus and its role with present methods of music composition.

Track listing

References

External links

Melomics Homepage

Melomics page at University of Malaga (Spain)Melomics Records Youtube ChannelTom Service' Review
of Hello World! from

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

*
German Public Radio coverage, with interviews.
{{Authority control 2012 albums Compositions by Iamus