The Artists who Say Ni!: Incorporating the Python programming language into creative coding for the realisation of musical works

Even though Python is a very popular programming language with a wide range of applications, in the domain of music, specifically electronic music, it is much less used than other languages and programming environments that have been built explicitly for musical creation, such as SuperCollider, Pure Data, Csound, Max, and Chuck. Since 2010 a Python module for DSP called Pyo has been available. This module consists of a complete set of DSP algorithms, Unit Generators, filters, effects, and other tools for the creation of electronic music and sound, yet its community is rather limited. Being part of Python, this module can be combined with a big variety of native and external Python modules for musical or extra-musical tasks, facilitating the realisation of interdisciplinary artworks focusing on music and sound. Starting a creative journey with this module, I was led to more Pythonic techniques for tasks other than music, like mining tweets from Twitter or creating code poetry, which I incorporated into my musical activity. This practice-based research explores the field of the creation of musical works based on Python by focusing on three works. The first one is a live coding poetry opera where the libretto is written in Python. The second one is a live algorithmic composition for an acoustic ensemble based on input from Twitter. The last work is a combination of live coding with live patching on a hardware modular synthesiser system. The main objective of this thesis is to determine the creative potential of Python in music and mixed media art by posing questions that are answered through these works. By doing this, this research aims to provide a conceptual framework for artistic creation that can function as inspiration to other musicians and artists. The title of this thesis is based on one of the most popular lines of the Monty Python comedy troupe, “the Knights who say Ni!”, since the initial developer of the Python programming language, Guido van Rossum, gave this name to this language inspired by Monty Python

Zielsystemunabhängige Quelltextsynthese aus natürlicher Sprache

In dieser Arbeit wurde das Thema der zielsystemunabhängigen Quelltextsynthese aus natürlicher Sprache untersucht. Aus aufbereiteten Sprachinformationen extrahieren Mustererkenner einen Syntaxbaum, welcher durch Besucher im Quelltext für unterschiedliche Zielsysteme übersetzt wurde. Die Ergebnisse einer Online-Studie zeigen, dass Quelltext mit Kontrollstrukturen aus natürlicher Sprache synthetisiert werden kann