Randomness

Welcome Back!

Wow, that was a long time, wasn't it?
Well, instead of telling you what I have been up to the last few months (hosting my parents in Finland, going to Spain and Belgium, Italy and Holland, working on my thesis, getting a place with my girlfriend Noora, etc, etc) I am just going to pick up where I left off....


While reviewing articles for the Music, Culture and Cognition class, i came across a very interesting article on randomness in the iPod shuffle. This relates a little to John Richardson's lecture.

It seems that humans have a biological ability to find patterns within explicitly random things, such as claiming the iPod shuffle has its 'favorite songs'. This extends to pretty much all of existence. Periodicity is seen everywhere from the 7 days of the week, to the 4 seasons, to sound waves, to the planetary patterns of the solar system. I think the idea that we find patterns in music, perhaps even in chance and aleotoric music, may be an interesting area of study for music perception...what do you think?

The article is located at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/
and is quite short...