Music and Naturoids: The Third Reality

At a high level of abstraction, it can be shown by analogy that attempts to reproduce natural phenomena occur not only in technological endeavors but also in human communication and the arts, including music. This paper presents the parallel development of artificial devices—or "naturoids"—in the fields of technology, message communication and musical composition, highlighting the transfiguration that unavoidably affects the resulting device, message or musical work. In the technological field and, to an extent, in the communications field, the transfiguration of the natural object is taken as a more or less unsatisfying outcome. By contrast, in the arts, and mainly in music, the transfiguration effect is exactly what the artist pursues through placing him- or herself at a non-ordinary observation level.