what answer would please you most
(2022)
for quintet and playback
Program notes
"ELIZA is a program which makes natural language conversation with a computer possible. Its present implementation is on the MAC time-sharing system at MIT. It is written in MAD-SLIP for the IBM 7091. Its name was chosen to emphasize that it may be incrementally improved by its users, since its language abilities may be continually improved by a "teacher". Like the Eliza of Pygmalion fame, it can be made to appear even more civilized, the relation of appearance to reality, however, remaining in the domain of the playwright.
[...] When in conversation with ELIZA, the user types in some statement or set of statements in natural language using normal punctuation and sentence structures. (...) The user's statement is terminated by a double carriage return which serves to turn control over to ELIZA. ELIZA then analyzes the user's statement and generates some response which it types out. Control is then again with the user.
[...] At this writing, the only serious ELIZA scripts which exist are some which cause ELIZA to respond roughly as would certain psychotherapists (Rogerians). ELIZA performs best when its human correspondent is initially instructed to "talk" to it, via the typewriter of course, just as one would to a psychiatrist. This mode of conversation was chosen because the psychiatric interview is one of the few examples of categorized dyadic natural language communication in which one of the participating pair is free to assume the pose of knowing almost nothing of the real world. If, for example, one were to tell a psychiatrist "I went for a long boat ride" and he responded "Tell me about boats", one would not assume that he knew nothing about boats, but that he had some purpose in so directing the subsequent conversation. It is important to note that this assumption is one made by the speaker. Whether it is realistic or not is an altogether separate question. In any case, it has a crucial psychological utility in that it serves the speaker to maintain his sense of being heard and understood.
[...] With ELIZA as the basic vehicle, experiments may be set up in which the subjects find it credible to believe that the responses which appear on his typewriter are generated by a human sitting at a similar instrument in another room. How must the script be written in order to maintain the credibility of this idea over a long period of time? How can the performance of ELIZA be systematically degraded in order to achieve controlled and predictable thresholds of credibility in the subject? What, in all this, is the role of the initial instruction to the subject? On the other hand, suppose the subject is told he is communicating with a machine. What is he led to believe about the machine as a result of his conversational experience with it? Some subjects have been very hard to convince that ELIZA (with its present script) is not human. This is a striking form of Turing's test. What experimental design would make it more nearly rigorous and airtight?
[...] ELIZA shows, if nothing else, how easy it is to create and maintain the illusion of understanding, hence perhaps of judgment deserving of credibility. A certain danger lurks there."
ELIZA - A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine (J. Weizenbaum, 1966)
Written for Shockwave Ensemble.
Duration: c. 5'
Instrumentation
Bass clarinet in B-flat
Percussion (drumkit setup)
Kick bass drum
Snare drum
2 tom-toms (large and small)
Suspended cymbal (large)
Hi-hat
2 mounted castanets
Electric guitar
MIDI keyboard (6 octaves)
Violin
Performance
9.09.2022 – Hochschule der Künste Bern (Bern, CH)
Performers: Shockwave Ensemble (Azra Ramic, Alexander Smith, Ruben Santorsa, Gilles Grimaître, Katarzyna Seremak)