Livingston is the musical experiment designed by a folklorist and a computer scientist with the goal of generating new, distinctly Canadian folk music with a computer.Their computer program has access to the “totality of Canadian folk music” and then produces lyrics and chord progressions, along with “supplementary instructions.” Interpreting and performing this computer-generated music is left to actual humans. Funded by the Ontario Arts Council, this man-machine collaboration has released the results, Artificially Intelligent Folk Songs Of Canada, Vol.1, and made them available as a free download from their website folksingularity.com. To some extent, Livingston is successful. They’ve identified and reassembled the main components of Canadian folk music, and it’s not bad. But there’s something missing, the hook. While entertaining enough, none of the songs are able to make a real connection with a listener. It’s a fantastic experiment though, and from that perspective, an interesting body of music. The entire process is well-documented online and worth checking out just for the neat-o factor. (Independent, folksingularity.com) broose tulloch