Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [540]

The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 540

Note

The versificator — machine-generated art — and the crucial human counterweight: Julia-esque spirit, the prole woman’s voice ‘turning dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.’ Machine authorship versus bodily redemption.