Google may be laser centered on generative AI today, like nearly all of its Huge Tech rivals. However that hasn’t stopped the search big from patronizing fairly out-there artwork initiatives, true to its experimental roots.
Enter the most recent creation from Google’s Artwork & Tradition Lab, Viola the Chicken, which makes use of AI to know cello and violin compositions. The work has Viola — an animated chicken that evokes a Sesame Road character — “carry out” well-known Beethoven, Vivaldi, Holst and Ravel stringed items as a person strikes their mouse backwards and forwards alongside a digital cello of their internet browser.
David Li, the artist behind Viola, labored with cellists and violinists in addition to music arrangers to develop the AI, which he then utilized to create an audio synthesis engine that generates the sounds of a cello or violin primarily based on a person’s mouse actions.
Viola taking part in music, powered by AI.
“The result’s an interactive music experiment that’s each enjoyable and academic,” Pamela Peter-Agbia, a program supervisor at Google Arts & Tradition, writes in a weblog publish. “Viola the Chicken is a good way for anybody to study string devices and to discover their very own creativity via music.”
Having spent a while with Viola, I can attest to the “enjoyable” half — however wouldn’t go as far as to say the venture is academic. It doesn’t present sheet music or notes to accompany your “taking part in,” and there aren’t any guardrails to stop somebody from performing songs wildly off-tempo.
Questionable pedagogy apart, there’s sufficient to maintain even informal classical followers entertained for a minute, like a recording characteristic and a freestyle mode that allows you to jam by way of Viola, on the viola, till you’ve had your fill.
For those who’re bored throughout the subsequent lunch break — or have younger youngsters to maintain entertained — give Viola a attempt. It’s free. Simply hold your expectations in verify — in contrast to a few of Google’s different AI-powered explorations in music of late, this chicken gained’t precisely blow your thoughts.