Wikipedia
In Greek mythology, Iamus was the son of Evadne, a daughter of Poseidon, sired by Apollo. Shamed by her pregnancy, Evadne exposed the child to the elements. He survived, as two snakes were feeding him with honey. He was then found alive lying among violets, and was named Iamus (from ίον, "violet") by Evadne. When he grew up, he descended into the waters of Alpheios and invoked Poseidon, his grandfather, and Apollo, his father, asking them to reveal his destiny to him. Apollo instructed him to go to Olympia. Granted the gift of prophecy by Apollo, he founded the Iamidae, a family of priests from Olympia.
Iamus is a computer cluster (a half-cabinet encased in a custom shell) located at Universidad de Málaga. Powered by Melomics' technology, the composing module of Iamus takes 8 minutes to create a full composition in different musical formats, although the native representation can be obtained by the whole system in less than a second (on average). Iamus only composes full pieces of contemporary classical music.
Iamus' Opus one, created on October 15, 2010 is the first fragment of professional contemporary classical music ever composed by a computer in its own style (rather than attempting to emulate the style of existing composers as was previously done by David Cope). Iamus's first full composition, Hello World!, premiered exactly one year after the creation of Opus one, on October 15, 2011. Four of Iamus's works premiered on July 2, 2012, and were broadcast live from the School of Computer Science at Universidad de Málaga as part of the events included in the Alan Turing year. The compositions performed at this event were later recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, creating the album Iamus, which New Scientist reported as the "first complete album to be composed solely by a computer and recorded by human musicians."
Commenting on the authenticity of the music, Stephen Smoliar, critic of classical music at The San Francisco Examiner, commented "What is primary is the act of making the music itself engaged by the performers and how the listener responds to what those performers do... what is most interesting about the documents generated by Iamus is their capacity to challenge the creative talents of performing musicians".
Iamus is the first studio album composed using Iamus, a computer cluster 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.
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, 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, prolific science author, has written a piece on the album in the interdisciplinary science journal Nature, about Iamus and its role with present methods of music composition.
Iamus is a figure in Greek mythology.
Iamus may also refer to:
- Iamus (computer), a computer created by University of Malaga
- Iamus (album), a 2012 album composed by the Iamus computer