“The Twin Paradox” challenge is a collaboration between the composers, the orchestra, Google Arts & Tradition and Google Germany. Having beforehand labored with Google to develop a music module for a challenge that introduced AI to college students, Jakob had the thought of co-composing with AI and was shortly launched to the staff at Google Arts & Tradition, who has a protracted historical past of experimenting with classical music.
“We’ve labored with famed file label Deutsche Grammophon to digitize a few of the oldest data ever made, and produced a 360° of the opening efficiency of the Elbphilharmonie live performance corridor in Hamburg,” says Simon Rein, senior program supervisor at Google Arts & Tradition. “What made this challenge particular to me was the emphasis on how AI can assist creativity and human connection: composers coming along with Gemini to write down the piece, an orchestra comes collectively to work out easy methods to play it and also you finish in a live performance the place lots of of individuals get pleasure from it collectively.”
Gemini’s first massive contribution to the piece was the title. “We began by giving Gemini the fundamentals: the quantity and sort of devices accessible, the specified size of the piece, and that it will be a creation between human composers and AI. Then we mentioned, ‘OK, give us a reputation,’” Jakob explains. In a intelligent nod to itself, Gemini prompt “The Twin Paradox,” the identify of a thought experiment from relativity principle that posits that if certainly one of a pair of twins makes an prolonged area journey at close to lightspeed, they may have aged lower than their twin once they return.
“We then challenged Gemini to inform us how The Twin Paradox would really sound as music,” Jakob says. “It prompt utilizing completely different tempos on the identical time, in addition to glissandi — or sliding between notes — to point out the stretching and compressing of time. That basically impressed us. It was once I thought, ‘Wow, that is going to work.’”
Over a number of months, Jakob interacted with the Gemini API through Google AI Studio on his laptop computer, sending its options to Adrian, who would translate them into sheet music and play them on piano. The duo would focus on the outcomes, refine and select what to incorporate of their composition.