The Uncanny Muse: Music, Art, and Machines from Automata to AI

Hadju (Adrianne Geffel: A Fiction), music editor at The Nation, asserts that technology has long assisted inventiveness rather than replaced or combatted it. He traces the interaction of machines—including cameras, drawing instruments, music boxes, player pianos, theremins, electronic drums, and Moog synthesizers—with the visual and auditory arts. Hajdu frames his survey within the historical framework of two women automatons—Zoe, a drawing doll from the 1880s, and the modern AI-DA, an artificial intelligence product. Although Western culture has highlighted the work of white men, Hajdu also points out the contributions of Black people, especially during the height of ragtime and jazz music. He rescues from relative obscurity Ada Lovelace for her work on Babbage’s proposed computer and Vaughn De Leath, dubbed the “First Lady of the Radio,” for helping to popularize that medium with her versatile singing during the 1920s. Modern industry’s cultural influence often democratizes rigidly replicable products. Hajdu opines that, so far, AI shows that action devices operate within human-crafted rules and patterns with the too-frequent biases those origins leave.