It’s called “TransProse” and its function is as simple as it is interesting: it “translates” literature into music . Those responsible are Hannah Davis, programmer, artist and musician from New York (USA) and scientist Mohammad Saif from the National Research Council of Canada. Both of them merged their areas of interest to achieve that a novel could be translated into music.
But how is it possible? Can the emotions expressed in a novel be translated into musical notes? The software, TransProse, determines the density of eight different emotions and also of two different states, positive or negative, throughout a novel . These eight emotions are joy, sadness, anger, disgust, anticipation, surprise, confidence, and fear. Depending on the chronology of the story, the musical measures that help to build the melody are also created.
The work, which has been presented at the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL) in Gothenburg (Sweden), explains that the system can generate music according to the use of emotional words in the novel. Specifically, the software goes through three well differentiated stages: first, it analyzes the text and creates an emotional profile , as well as a statistical compilation on the presence of words that show emotions in it; second, based on this profile, it generates tempo values, scales, octaves and sequences of notes ; third, it uses Jfugue , an open source Java API for music programming, to generate the corresponding audio file.
By now, they have already tried TransProse with such famous works as “A Clockwork Orange” (Anthony Burgess) or “The Heart of Darkness” (Joseph Conrad). Perhaps in a few years you will be able to listen to your favorite literati on your headphones.
