Words and Music

The possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence is one of the major issues of the day, but for centuries people have imagined machines that could think, able to create and possibly even enjoy art. This edition looks at examples of mechanical minds, with extracts from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Thea Von Harbou's Metropolis, as well as automata like a moving sculpture of a silver swan and what was known as the 'talking Turk'. The limits of art created by computers is considered in poetry by Adrienne Rich and musings from Nick Cave, while the playlist features Philip Glass's The Robot, music composed by Tarik O'Regan using AI, and a reading from HG Wells's Tono-Bungay in which the player piano assists romance. The readers are Annette Badland and Daniel Millar.