User:Xenji/Redundancy: Difference between revisions

''Any aggregate of events or objects (e.g., a sequence of phonemes, a painting, or a frog, or a culture) shall be said to contain "redundancy" or "pattern" if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a "slash mark," such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can'' guess'', with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on one side of the slash contains'' information ''or has'' meaning ''about what is on the other side. Or, in engineer's language, the aggregate contains "redundancy."''

<ul><li>A system (eg. "a work of art", "a composition", "a tuning system") implies a network of redundancies.</li><li>We can talk about these redundancies: "less redundancy"; "more redundancy"; "no redundancy", etc.<ul><li>"Less" or "more" or "no" redundancy is determined by each listener (largely unconsciously) according to her structure at that moment.</li></ul></li><li>[Perceived] more redundancy in one aspect may ground a piece so that [perceived] less redundancy in another aspect can be seen as meaningful.<ul><li>"One thing stays the same so another thing can change."</li><li>"One thing changes so another thing can stay the same."</li></ul></li><li>"No redundancy" can be seen as redundant when the listener can predict continued lack of redundancy.<ul><li>"I know what it's going to do next - something random!"</li><li>A listener may hear or not hear (make or not make) an intended redundancy/pattern.</li></ul></li><li>Answers to questions of which redundancies (or which networks of redundancies) help us decide things like "style", "meaning", "how should I listen to this?" and "is this music, anyway?"</li></ul>