ABSTRACT At a high level of abstraction, it can be shown by analogy that attempts to reproduce natural phenomena occur not only in technological endeavors but also in human communication and the arts, including music. This paper presents the parallel development of artificial devices—or “naturoids”—in the fields of technology, message communication and musical composition, highlighting the transfiguration that unavoidably affects the resulting device, message or musical work. In the technological field and, to an extent, in the communications field, the transfiguration of the natural object is taken as a more or less unsatisfying outcome. By contrast, in the arts, and mainly in music, the transfiguration effect is exactly what the artist pursues through placing him- or herself at a nonordinary observation level.

The author presents the idea that all human attempts to reproduce natural objects (“exemplars”) or their functions—that is, to build artificial objects or processes—unavoidably result in a transfiguration of the exemplars. After introducing the main concepts of a theory of the artificial, the author extends the theory to communication and the arts, both of which provide compelling examples of the generation of artificial objects or processes. The author conceives of art as a paradoxical communication process by which transfiguration does not represent a failure of the reproduction process but, rather, the true objective of the artist.