https://youtu.be/mTG-Hk_wYaY
This piece was made by programming a suite of Python packages that “read” through a .txt file of Melville’s book and, using several LLMs trained on 19th-century English-language literature (and the King James Bible and Shakespeare—Melville’s most apparent syntactic influences), “translates” or interprets the sentiment analysis of the text into various musical parameters in real time. I built logics to govern harmonic structure, modulation, rhythmic activity, polyphonic density, harmonic salience/chromatic saturation, pedaling, velocity, and methods of sliding between the poles of each parameter in the hopes of creating an emergent, strangely organic musical response out of the program. Due to the real-time response of the code, every run is unique, even when it’s reading the exact same text. My intent is to do the whole book, with unique tweaks and updates for each chapter (there are 136) to create constantly varying “movements” of piano music. I want the music to create the same sense of vastness that the book does. A sense that this could never end. And an ambiguity between wanting it to, and hoping it never does.

MOBY-DICK; or, THE WHALE: CHAPTER I.—LOOMINGS.

Joshua Mastel