Embodiment in 18th Century Depictions of Human-Machine Co-Creativity

Artificial intelligence has a rich history in literature; fiction has shaped how we view artificial agents and their capacities in the real world. This paper looks at embodied examples of human-machine co-creation from the literature of the Long 18th Century (1650–1850), examining how older depictions of creative machines could inform and inspire modern day research. The works are analyzed from the perspective of design fiction with special focus on the embodiment of the systems and the creativity exhibited by them. We find that the chosen examples highlight the importance of recognizing the environment as a major factor in human-machine co-creative processes and that some of the works seem to precede current examples of artificial systems reaching into our everyday lives. The examples present embodied interaction in a positive, creativity-oriented way, but also highlight ethical risks of human-machine co-creativity. Modern day perceptions of artificial systems and creativity can be limited to some extent by the technologies available; fictitious examples from centuries past allow us to examine such limitations using a Design Fiction approach. We conclude by deriving four guidelines for future research from our fictional examples: 1) explore unlikely embodiments; 2) think of situations, not systems; 3) be aware of the disjunction between action and appearance; and 4) consider the system as a situated moral agent

Emergent Rhythmic Structures as Cultural Phenomena Driven by Social Pressure in a Society of Artificial Agents

This thesis studies rhythm from an evolutionary computation perspective. Rhythm is the most fundamental dimension of music and can be used as a ground to describe the evolution of music. More specifically, the main goal of the thesis is to investigate how complex rhythmic structures evolve, subject to the cultural transmission between individuals in a society. The study is developed by means of computer modelling and simulations informed by evolutionary computation and artificial life (A-Life). In this process, self-organisation plays a fundamental role. The evolutionary process is steered by the evaluation of rhythmic complexity and by the exposure to rhythmic material. In this thesis, composers and musicologists will find the description of a system named A-Rhythm, which explores the emerged behaviours in a community of artificial autonomous agents that interact in a virtual environment. The interaction between the agents takes the form of imitation games. A set of necessary criteria was established for the construction of a compositional system in which cultural transmission is observed. These criteria allowed the comparison with related work in the field of evolutionary computation and music. In the development of the system, rhythmic representation is discussed. The proposed representation enabled the development of complexity and similarity based measures, and the recombination of rhythms in a creative manner. A-Rhythm produced results in the form of simulation data which were evaluated in terms of the coherence of repertoires of the agents. The data shows how rhythmic sequences are changed and sustained in the population, displaying synchronic and diachronic diversity. Finally, this tool was used as a generative mechanism for composition and several examples are presented.Leverhulme Trus

Encouraging the expression of the unspeakable : influence and agency in a robotic creature

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-177) and index.The boundary between subject and object is becoming ever-the-more blurred by the creation of new types of computational objects. Especially when these objects take the form of robotic creatures do we get to question the powerful impact of the object on the person. Couple this with the expression of internal, unspoken experience through the making of non-speech sounds and we have a situation that demands new thoughts and new methodologies. This thesis works through these questions via the design and study of syngvab, a robotic marionette that moves in response to human non-speech vocal sounds. I draw from the world of puppetry and performing objects in the creation of syngvab the object and its stage, showing how this old tradition is directly relevant for the development of non-anthropomorphic, non-zoomorphic robotic creatures. I show how this mongrel of an object requires different methodologies of study, pulling from actor-network theory to examine syngvab in a symmetric manner with the human participants. The results of a case study interaction with syngvab support the contention that non-speech sounds as drawn out by a robotic creature are a potent means of exploring and investigating the unspeakable.by Nicholas A. Knouf.S.M

'Estes Sons, esta Linguagem'

Writing musicological studies always entails writing about the history of musicology itself. Our Festschrift aims in the first place to develop knowledge on a wide range of musical topics and to stimulate scientific discourse. It is also meant as a contribution to the tradition of honouring prominent academics by means of a celebratory publication – a long-established practice in German-speaking countries, and one which has become widespread internationally. Thus, it is our intention to dedicate the present volume to a scholar, lecturer and intellectual whose lifetime’s work has had a major impact on the consolidation of modern musicology at the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa: Mário Vieira de Carvalho. A Festschrift usually reflects the dedicatee’s scholarly fields and research interests. Our Essays on Music, Meaning and Society encompass some core issues in areas of research close to Mário Vieira de Carvalho’s own. His work has consistently explored the relations between musical phenomena and their social environment. For Mário Vieira de Carvalho music and society cannot be viewed as separate realms: they belong together and interact in multiple ways. It follows from this that musicology must devise ever more refined approaches to the interrelation of social and musical processes and practices. The chapter Social Existence Determines Human Consciousness: Interdependencies between Music, Society, and Technology addresses precisely those questions. The implications of Mário Vieira de Carvalho’s work for music analysis, criticism and aesthetics are manifold. Differentiations in musical reception or musical behaviour respond to differentiations in musical structure, which in turn reflect the musical intentions of the composer – a view developed by Mário Vieira de Carvalho since the time of his encounter with Christian Kaden as a former doctoral supervisor, and brought to fruition in his well-known studies on the music of Fernando Lopes-Graça, among other composers. Interrelations between composition, performance and reception are outlined in our chapters Analysing Music and Musicians: Text – Performance – Context and The Meaning of Meaning: Music, Discourse, and Silence

At the limits : postcolonial and hyperreal translations of Australian poetry

This dissertation employs the methodologies of postcolonial theory and hyperreal theory (following Baudrillard), in order to investigate articulations of identity, nation and representation in contemporary Australian poetry. Informed by a comparative analysis of contemporary Latin American poetry and cultural theory (in translation), as a means of re-examining the Australian context, this dissertation develops a new transnational model of Australian poetics. The central thesis of this dissertation is that contemporary Australian poetry engages with the postcolonial at its limits. That is, at those sites of postcoloniality that are already mapped by theory, but also at those that occur beyond postcolonial theory. The hyperreal is understood as one such limit, traceable within the poetry but silenced in conventional postcolonial theory. As another limit to the postcolonial, this dissertation reads Latin American poetry and theory, in whose texts postcolonial theory is actively resisted, but where postcolonial and hyperreal poetics nevertheless intersect. The original critical context constructed by this dissertation enables a new set of readings of Australian identity through its poetry. Within this new interpretative context, the readings of contemporary Australian poetry articulate a psycho-social postcoloniality; offer a template for future transactions between national poetry and global politics; and develop a model of the postcolonial hyperreal

Literary Translation, Reception, and Transfer

The three concepts mentioned in the title of this book refer to different forms of contact between two or more literary phenomena. Transfer, reception, and translation studies all imply the ‘travelling’ and the imitation or adaptation of entire texts, genres, forms or contents. The volume includes 38 essays dedicated to research in this area that have previously been read at the ICLA conference 2016 in Vienna