Quote from: georgem on December 22, 2013, 10:59:45 PM

Quote from: markm on December 22, 2013, 10:46:21 PM

For writing, think about fonts.

We do not care what font is used at display time to display an article, we are free to use any font we choose to use.

Oh I absolutely care. There are classical pieces that sound divine when played with a harpsichord, but sound terribly inappropriate when played with a piano.

Quote from: markm on December 22, 2013, 10:46:21 PM

To get a free open source Mona Lisa we would need to discover what brushes and paints were used, how, and in what sequence, to produce that painting.

We would then be free to see what the Mona Lisa would have looked like if it were performed using different brushes, different paints, different sequences.

You assume that every creation process is quantizable into things like strokes, movements, pressure points, whatever... this sure is true for code or text.

But much like some music instruments can't be controlled and reproduced by MIDI, many artforms have myriads of such miniscule subprocesses (the artist is often not even aware of) that you would need hypothetical scifi devices to be able to "catch" what happens during the creation process. (Earlier I heard you mention star trek replicators replicating a violin. I don't think wishful thinking about future developments will help us make good decisions about devcoins present.)

I saw a site just recently where a youth orchestra (landphilharmonic, I think) uses intruments built from scrap found in landfills.

Duplicating all those instruments would indeed be hard. But you seem to jump from that to it being impossible or improbable to 3-D print a violin or to code a violin-sounds-synthesiser. To me that landphilharmonic showed much the opposite from it being hard to emulate instruments, to the contrary it seemed to indicate that you don't even need a 3-D printer, perfectly use-able instruments can be created even out of crap found in landfills, no need for special and possibly expensive 3D-printer-ink!

But nonetheless 3D printer code for creating all standard and umpteen non-standard instruments is something we should try to have.

And robotic arms for bending metal and working wood etc should be able eventually to use landfill materials too, they just would need a feedback process of some kind letting them try the tone, adjust the object, try the tone etc, "tuning" it until it sounds as good or almost as good as the ones the landphilharmonic uses.

Also plans and instructions and guides for humans on how to find suitable things in landfills and how best to adapt them for musical use would also be good to have.

-MarkM-