Feedback: Translations from the Irrational

By Elliott Sharp

Book Overview

Wide-ranging discussion of culture, consciousness, and music from a unique artist's perspective

Feedback is a wide-ranging meditation on music, sound, artificial intelligence, consciousness, contemporary culture and politics, and the life of the touring musician. Author Elliott Sharp is considered one of the central figures in NYC's Downtown Scene and is a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist, and educator. Starting from a background in the sciences, Sharp found his passion for music as a teen, and it has never abated. His philosophy is informed not just by music and its creation but by continuing studies in physics and genetics and a visceral interest in our modern world and its joys and horrors. In Feedback, Sharp engages in speculative thought about how consciousness might have arisen and what the future holds for humanity with the advent of an Artificial Intelligence that is certainly artificial but might not exactly be intelligent. The "Improviser's Mind" is discussed in the context of post-quantum physics, probability, socio-acoustics, and Butoh dance. Sharp loves to digress into unpredictable areas but ties it all together in an overarching narrative that is both personal and conceptual.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819502049
• ISBN13: 9780819502049
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher