Just been listening to Radio 4's 29th May Music Feature on Roger Linn's Drum Machines -The remarkable story of Roger Linn, inventor of the drum machine. The son of an opera singer and a music professor, Linn's invention revolutionised popular music. He has inspired artists as diverse as Herbie Hancock, Heaven 17, and the Wu Tang Clan. Exploited by shady businessmen, Linn has been a reclusive figure for decades.
The artistes inteviewed talked of the collision of black culture, technology and creativity that led to Hip Hop, Anyone interested in substantial and radical innovation will find this worth listening to.
There was a fascinating insight into creativity as defined by Stephen Bayley "Nothing defines creativity better than the ability to defeat habit by originality." Someone talks of the Information Theory invented by Claude Shannon and its application to music.. he said something like if there is a message being sent out and we (the receiver) expect a yes then if it is a yes we will take less notice than if it is a no.. so when snare drums play consistently they fade into the background and disappear from our consciousness. As the Drum machine allows for non-regular sound we can surprise peopele and keep the listener alert!
Strangely, in the same article, Stephen Bayley also refers to Claude Shannon: "Is it ever going to be possible to quantify the value of ideas? There is an interesting precedent here. In 1948, Claude Shannon published his " Mathematical Theory of Communications" in the Bell Systems Technical Journal. Here Shannon laid the practical basis for our digital revolution. He popularised the word "entropy" (adapted from thermodynamics). He defined the difference between signal and noise. And he made the important distinction between mere data (measurements) and information (data with value which affects behaviour). Then, not taking a breath, Shannon established the binary maths that moved us from analogue to digital systems. The separation of the medium and the message was another of his proprietary insights. This distinction between form and content allowed engineers to concentrate on technology, freeing the rest of us. In one academic paper, Shannon established the general rules of information theory and predicted the convergence of computers and phones. Shannon had more new ideas than most and to demonstrate his resistance to convention he said: "I had to invent any maths that was needed." "
So creativity is becoming (has always been) a key asset to defeat habitual innovation (incremental) by more extreme forms... those that make a significant contribution!
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