Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter is an ambitious work that explores many of the edge-of-science topics such as artificial intelligence and the self-reference parad...

Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern by Douglas R. Hofstadter is a popular and influential collection of essays that explore a range of topics related to artificial intelli...

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter is a captivating exploration of the nature of the self and consciousness. Drawing on the latest research in the field of cognitive science and philosophy, ...

An early draft of A Strange Loop had a different title and a storyline where the main character Usher was writing mashups of his songs to Liz Phair songs that he loved. The final song in the musical was a song called “Fanboy” that he wanted to mashup to her song Strange Loop which was a favorite of mine, though I never knew what the title meant. After years of working on the piece it finally occurred to me to Google the term “strange loop” to see if it had any particular meaning. When I did, Douglas Hofstadter’s books Gödel, Escher, Bach and I Am A Strange Loop turned up. Both explore Hofstadter’s theories of self-reference in art, mathematics, science and the literal self within every human being. Extremely dense but kind of wondrous, I realised I was already writing a recursive exploration of the self in my musical that just needed the proper frame to anchor it and that my movement toward Liz Phair led me to Hofstadter which led me back to the concept of “I” which was itself a strang

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter is an incredible and captivating exploration of humanity's thought process, creativity, and paradoxes. With its vast range of topi...

An early draft of A Strange Loop had a different title and a storyline where the main character Usher was writing mashups of his songs to Liz Phair songs that he loved. The final song in the musical was a song called “Fanboy” that he wanted to mashup to her song Strange Loop which was a favorite of mine, though I never knew what the title meant. After years of working on the piece it finally occurred to me to Google the term “strange loop” to see if it had any particular meaning. When I did, Douglas Hofstadter’s books Gödel, Escher, Bach and I Am A Strange Loop turned up. Both explore Hofstadter’s theories of self-reference in art, mathematics, science and the literal self within every human being. Extremely dense but kind of wondrous, I realised I was already writing a recursive exploration of the self in my musical that just needed the proper frame to anchor it and that my movement toward Liz Phair led me to Hofstadter which led me back to the concept of “I” which was itself a strang