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Thom Gencarelli
Biography
Thom Gencarelli, Ph.D. (NYU, 1993) is Professor and founding Chair of the Communication Department at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, where he also serves as Advisor to the College’s student-run newspaper, The Quadrangle. He is a Past President of the Media Ecology Association, the New York State Communication Association, and the New Jersey Communication Association (twice), Treasurer and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics, and Editor of the IGS’ official journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He researches and writes about media ecology, media education/media literacy, new media, and popular media and culture with an emphasis on popular music, and is co-editor (with Brian Cogan) of Baby Boomers and Popular Culture: An Inquiry into America’s Most Powerful Generation (ABC-Clio/ Praeger, 2014). He also has two books due out soon: Searching for the Right Notes: Essays on Media, Music, and Meaning (Peter Lang) and, with Corey Anton, General Semantics and Politics (the New Non-aristotelian Library).
Thom is the recipient of multiple awards including the Eastern Communication Association’s Distinguished Teaching Fellows Award and the Media Ecology Association’s Louis Forsdale Award for Outstanding Educator in the Field of Media Ecology in 2019, the John F. Wilson Fellowship Award for Scholarship and Service from the New York State Communication Association in 2016, the Media Ecology Association’s Christine L. Nystrom Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Service to the Field of Media Ecology in 2013, and, in 2023, the J. Talbott Winchell Award for Outstanding Contributions and Service to the Cause of General Semantics from the Institute of General Semantics.
Thom is also a songwriter, musician, and producer, and has released four album-length works with his ensemble bluerace: World is Ready (2009), Beautiful Sky (2013), Mistral (2019), and the group’s most recent release, INDYeGO (2024).
Why AI Can Write Music and Why it Cannot
Music is effectively a matter of mathematics. Mathematics is the basis of information processing. In Susanne Langer’s terms, mathematics is also one of our two discursive forms of communication. In addition, like our other, primary discursive form, verbal language, the possibilities in musical composition are effectively infinite. Thus, it makes sense that music can be created through coding. And it can. However, this leads us to four important philosophical questions: (1) Why would anyone want to use it to do so? (2) Who would want to use it to do so? People who cannot compose very well, but who wish they could? People who are simply looking to introduce music into the marketplace and profit from it? (3) Can AI create good – or, better, great – music? (4) What is the difference between music created by a human being and music created via machine learning and code?
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