What if...

[Antnee]

I was just thinking...

If sometime in the near future, they were able to come up with a robot, or robotic human, or whatever... whose sole purpose was to play the piano with a perfect technique and amazingly deep enterpretation that surpassed any human beings interpretations or technique, would you care to listen to him (or her )give his  performances  or would you much prefer the playing of a real, living, crying, bleeding, person, even if they weren't as good?

Hey it could happen...  

-Tony-

[benji]

I'm sure it can happen, and it probably will, though I think it would be terrible. Think of everything that goes into playing piano (well)--practice, education, disappointment, emotion, success, not to mention everything that goes on in one's life that doesn't have to do with piano. A robot would just skip all of that, which would absolutely enrage pianists of the time, and give human players a hopelessly inadequate feeling. Art is not just a pretty painting, or a well-interpreted sonata, it is everything that went into making it. People like Horowitz and others so much because they do make mistakes, which show the world that these performers are human and not just robots programmed to play perfectly. In my opinion, perfect is imperfect.

[faulty_damper]

Don't we have that now?  It's called Midi.  Absolutely perfect in every way; it can play impossible chords at amazing speeds and if provoked by some ingenious programing, can play expressively as well.

[Antnee]

Yeah but I thought that midi can only have so many volume levels, like 16 or something like that... Opposed to the infinite that humans can produce... I've always sort of wondered what it would be like to have a midi player piano and hear all of those impossible Liszt pieces being played perfectly (thechnically of course)...

-Tony-