“The Twin Paradox” project is a collaboration between the composers, the orchestra, Google Arts & Culture and Google Germany. Having previously worked with Google to develop a music module for a project that brought AI to students, Jakob had the idea of co-composing with AI and was quickly introduced to the team at Google Arts & Culture, who has a long history of experimenting with classical music.
“We’ve worked with famed record label Deutsche Grammophon to digitize some of the oldest records ever made, and produced a 360° of the opening performance of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg,” says Simon Rein, senior program manager at Google Arts & Culture. “What made this project special to me was the emphasis on how AI can support creativity and human connection: composers coming together with Gemini to write the piece, an orchestra comes together to work out how to play it and you end in a concert where hundreds of people enjoy it together.”
Gemini’s first big contribution to the piece was the title. “We started by giving Gemini the basics: the number and type of instruments available, the desired length of the piece, and that it would be a creation between human composers and AI. Then we said, ‘OK, give us a name,’” Jakob explains. In a clever nod to itself, Gemini suggested “The Twin Paradox,” the name of a thought experiment from relativity theory that posits that if one of a pair of twins makes an extended space journey at near lightspeed, they will have aged less than their twin when they return.
“We then challenged Gemini to tell us how The Twin Paradox would actually sound as music,” Jakob says. “It suggested using different tempos at the same time, as well as glissandi — or sliding between notes — to show the stretching and compressing of time. That really inspired us. It was when I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to work.’”
Over several months, Jakob interacted with the Gemini API via Google AI Studio on his laptop, sending its suggestions to Adrian, who would translate them into sheet music and play them on piano. The duo would discuss the results, refine and choose what to include in their composition.
