LookingOutwards-11 Sadie Johnson

Hannah Davis, Saif M. Mohammad, TransProse, 2014

Thanks to databases that evaluate the “emotional content” of words based on their emphasis, definitions, and connotations, an algorithm has been created to transform the emotional content of the diction in famous literary novels into music. To create this program, two programmers and artists named Hannah Davis and Saif Mohammed first split novels into four parts – the beginning, earlier middle, later middle, and conclusion. Each emotion from striking words are translated into a note or series of notes, which the creators say was the part where their artistic capabilities shone through the most. After that, the same note or sequence of notes was repeated whenever that emotion was repeated in the source text’s diction.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.2124