Eduardo Miranda’s Quantum Explorations

The field is still somewhat new to me, despite how much I’ve read and continue to read about quantum computing, but on Thursday night I attended a performance and presentation at Gray Area here in San Francisco by Eduardo Miranda. Miranda is a professor of computer music at the University of Plymouth, and he is currently visiting as a fellow at Stochastic Labs, across the bay in Berkeley. He’s the editor of several related books, including Quantum Computing in the Arts and Humanities (Springer), Quantum Computer Music (Springer) and Advances in Quantum Computer Music (World Scientific).

At Gray Area, Miranda performed three works and then gave a brief talk about the use of quantum computing in the production of music, and took questions from the audience. I’m still wrapping my head around it, but a key distinguishing characteristic seems to be the unique nature of superposition in quantum physics, a topic explored in particular in Miranda’s piece Heisenberg’s Hammer, shown up at the top of this post.

He’s been involved in artificial intelligence in music since the mid-1990s, but says of the current state of the technology, during the ongoing boom, “It makes it easy to make music, but not to be creative.” He also expressed a concern that “big data averages everything and creates mediocrity,” and explained he is currently exploring “small data” as an alternate path.

In Miranda’s own description, the state of quantum computing today is equivalent to the age of punch cards in the overall development of computers. If I followed him correctly, then he expressed uncertainty, so to speak, that this particular path will even pay compositional dividends, but he’s continuing to see how far he can go with it.