Symbolic and subsymbolic information processing in models of musical communication and cognition
Marc Leman · Interface · 1989
Subsymbolic information processing may provide new ways of dealing with aspects of communicative behavior that have hitherto been very hard to deal with in symbolic models. Part of our analysis is to show that musical activities such as listening and composing draw at large on dynamic principles of what is commonly called perception and/or auditory imagination. We argue that different types of subsymbolic information processing mechanisms might be explored and applied to this field as alternatives and/or complementary approaches to symbolic models. In particular, we consider the possibility of representing musical concepts as patterns of information provided by sensory transducer‐mechanisms, rather than abstract symbols where content is divorced from form. This involves a shift from propositional representations of music to analogical representations (where content is contained in the form). Analogical representations of music have not been fully explored until now. We argue in favor of an analog musical representation format based on Psychoacoustics and propose this system as an alternative to the speech‐logics approach to music representation. An example is given of a self‐organizing system with an emerging global structure based on this type of representation.