RP: NovaCorp/Horizon City Visit

"A little music perhaps. What are you in the mood for?" Kip asked, putting down his knife and fork and politely finishing his mouthful before talking, and quickly reviewing his music database, and wondering if he should create something a little new, it certainly wouldn't be too hard ...

"I'll let you decide the music selection." Harm said, "I have no particular preferance. Unlike food, music can only ever touch one of the senses."

"Your point is taken, although perhaps it could be argued that music can stimulate the mind, that it touches the soul itself, not like anything quite as base as food can." Kip said, putting on a slow uplifting classical quartet for oboe, bassoon, double bass and piano, "Or perhaps not. Perhaps food, as a physical object has far more desire than something which is simply vibrations in the air."

"One can live without music, but without fuel one would die.â€

"To a degree I will agree with you, nothing tastes sweeter than the first breath of a man who has been drowning or suffocating, drawing in fresh air even though it burns him. However some would argue that food, or fuel as you so kindly widened the parametres of this discussion to include, is a necessity, and as such taken for granted, we become use to it, blase if you will, and we can not escape that it is something that has to be done. We are bound to eating, and our enjoyment of food, by the legacy of ancestors in the case of organics. I on the other hand have no pleasure from being fed energy from my power generators, despite it being quite as necessary. And I think you might be selling music a little short. So much more with food? You state four category's: look, taste, texture, composition, and yet music has so much more than that. You have the exquisite melody's and bass lines, perhaps dozens of other instruments playing, and working together to create a layered effect of great magnificence, you man tempo, dynamics, the unique 'flavour' of every interest, much as an ingredient, and yet each instrument can do so much more than a fish on a plate, capable of in itself playing a tune that will touch someone on a far deeper level than, "Oh I like this steak". which by the way I do. Taste of food is a fleeting thing, going from meal to meal, and a taste is usually forgotten easily, apart from perhaps "Oh that was nice, perhaps we should go there again." Music can stay with you for years, and can have life-changing impacts, in all doing so much more than even the most delicious meal could do. A meal may be essential for 'life', but music is a key to 'Life'." Kip responded passionately.

"Taste may be fleeting but each taste is unique even if you eat the same dish twice. A sound can always be reproduced. Of course I am selling food short as well, there are plenty more different ways that it can be appreciated but it exists in sight, smell, touch, and taste. Music you can only hear. A combination of four aspects of the senses can naturally lead to more combinations than can only one.â€

"Although a sound can be reproduced, it will never be the exact same sound, not because of any physical detail of the recording, but because of the reception within the mind of the listener. Every time someone hears a piece of music they get a slightly different experience. Music you can only hear? Incorrect really, especially if you are at a live performance, or playing an instrument. In a live performance you can feel the vibrations from the music travelling through your body, especially in the more modern branches of music, and if you play an instrument then this reaches another level, the taste of the reed if you play a wind instrument, the feel of it on your fingers, and the feel as your fingers dance along it. And sight? Well you still have the ability to see live performances, and also there is the minds eye, which is so often stimulated through the listening to, or watching of music." Kip said.

"Sorry, I don't think I get the same amount of stimulation from watching musicians play with themselves as you do Kip," Harm said with a smile.

Kip laughed loudly at that, "Ah, a wonderful comeback. It is true that I do get a high degree of satisfaction from both listening to music and watching the artists at work, but it's not at all sexually motivated, as you would suggest. As far as I know it's completely platonic, altough if they wish to admire my form, they of course may."

Harm just sipped her wine for the moment.

"So do you not play an instrument then?" Kip asked, his language changing a little from the more eloquent idiolect he had adapted before, "Or was a wrong to gather that much from our conversation on the relative merit of food and music?"

"I have, but I don't really consistantly play any of them," Harm said, "I was never much of a music fan though I have played a few woodwinds before but that dosen't really count."

"My favourites are woodwinds actually. It's my thought that you can put the most emotion through a woodwind instrument." Kip mused, "I myself play nothing, I neither have the ability to do it properly, or the belief I could. True music playing is the work of an organic, the exact mood and feel of the peice established by the player. Although I could make a mockery of this if I so chose, and few if any could tell the difference, it wouldn't seem right to me. As it is I compose, I do not play."

Harm shrugged, "Sound is sound."

Kip laughed lightly, "Oh come on, you don't believe that. You can't tell me the sound of fingernails being dragged down a chalk board, or the screeching of a dying mechanical device is really the same as a piece of music, or even a single note. All sound is vibration, I'll give you that, but what our brains interpret those vibrations as makes all the difference."

"Everything is relative," She said.

"Agreed." Kip replied, not particularly wanting to try and work out how Einstein's theory's applied to music right at that moment, and instead getting back to his meal, savouring every bite. Perhaps he could begin to see the faintest glimmer of Harm's point.

"So what is it like for you to 'eat' food?" Harm asked, "If the necessity is gone is the enjoyment gone as well?"

"Not at all. Just because something is not necessary does not mean that I can't enjoy it. I don't need to be having dinner with you, but I'm enjoying it immensely." Kip grinned wickedly, "What I do is I try and work out what a human must feel when eating a certain meal when measuring brain chemistry, as well as studying at sub-cellular level, and the interactions between various molecules in the mouth and between them and the receptors on the tongue and the signals it sends off before creating an emulation program, which should give me the experiences I desire. Oh, and I got sent them through a bio-neural interface, but I did the scanning first." Kip grinned again, "And as such, I now taste this steak (hopefully), like a human would, and take great pleasure out of it." To make his point he took another piece of steak out on a fork and popping it in his mouth chewed on it happily.

"Have you ever tried downloading your personality into an organic body? Try living life like us mortals?â€