Athanasius Kircher: Music, Machines, and the Marvelous

About this event

This lecture event will be held in Lincoln Hall, Room 124.

Andrew Cashner, "Can Music Be Computed? Athanasius Kircher’s Arca musarithmica and the Dubious Quest to Automate Art"

Laurent Dubreuil, " Kircher.ai: Theory & Practice of Algorithmic Generation of Music & Poetry in the 17th Century"

Organized by Patricia García Gil and Laurent Ferri, this symposium explores the extraordinary sonic universe of Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), the Jesuit polymath whose investigations brought together, mathematics, music, acoustics, natural philosophy, history, archeology, technology, and of course religion. Through lectures, performances, demonstrations, and an experimental “musical salon”, we will explore his fascination with fantastical instruments, music-generating machines, algorithmic composition, and music's capacity to affect the human body and emotions. From wind-activated harps and water-power organs to mechanical instruments and early systems of automated composition, Kircher's expansive conception of sound invites us to reconsider the boundaries between human, animal, natural, and machine-generated music. His work also opens conversations about cultural encounters, missionary ambitions, and the circulation of knowledge, while raising questions that resonate with contemporary debates on artificial intelligence, creativity, and musical authorship