Re: [MUSIC-IR] Re: musical complexity

[Laszlo Toth <tothl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2 Sep 2011, Kevin Austin wrote:

> I would propose that the complexity / complicatedness is in the mind,
> not the object, or 'acoustical signal' [sic]. [* I don't think we want
> to go there.] In this case, I suggest, there is only a psychometric of
> complexity, not a metric.

I'd rather say that complexity is relation of both the "mind" and the
"signal". In machine learning theory the relative complexity of a data set
wrt. a model comes from two components: one is the complexity of the model
itself and the second is the complexity of explaining the data
with the model. I think this scheme fits this situation as well, just
substitute "mind" for "model" and "music" for "data".
(Well of course, in machine learning we have mathematical models, for
which we can calculate some complexity measure, while we can't do that
for someone's mind)

               Laszlo Toth
        Hungarian Academy of Sciences         *
  Research Group on Artificial Intelligence   *   "Failure only begins
     e-mail: tothl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx            *    when you stop trying"
     http://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/~tothl        *