This article was taken from the September 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Hannah Davis is using sentiment-analysis algorithms to turn novels into songs. "I wanted to translate between the two art forms," says the New York-based artist.
Her software, TransProse, scans the text for "emotional" words, and an algorithm composes a piano piece from a set of rules. "Happier novels are played in the major key, sadder novels in the minor key," explains Saif Mohammad, a researcher at Canada's National Research Council who helped develop the software. "Octaves use an overall joy-to-sadness ratio," he says. "Tempo is based on active-to-passive emotions."
As a result, Alice in Wonderland is bouncy and cheerful, A Clockwork Orange is menacingly manic and Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a bleak and sombre listen. The word "audiobook" just got a new meaning.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
