Music as complex emergent behaviour : an approach to interactive music systems

Access to the full-text thesis is no longer available at the author's request, due to 3rd party copyright restrictions. Access removed on 28.11.2016 by CS (TIS).Metadata merged with duplicate record (http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/770) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).This is a digitised version of a thesis that was deposited in the University Library. If you are the author please contact PEARL Admin ([email protected]) to discuss options.This thesis suggests a new model of human-machine interaction in the domain of non-idiomatic musical improvisation. Musical results are viewed as emergent phenomena issuing from complex internal systems behaviour in relation to input from a single human performer. We investigate the prospect of rewarding interaction whereby a system modifies itself in coherent though non-trivial ways as a result of exposure to a human interactor. In addition, we explore whether such interactions can be sustained over extended time spans. These objectives translate into four criteria for evaluation; maximisation of human influence, blending of human and machine influence in the creation of machine responses, the maintenance of independent machine motivations in order to support machine autonomy and finally, a combination of global emergent behaviour and variable behaviour in the long run. Our implementation is heavily inspired by ideas and engineering approaches from the discipline of Artificial Life. However, we also address a collection of representative existing systems from the field of interactive composing, some of which are implemented using techniques of conventional Artificial Intelligence. All systems serve as a contextual background and comparative framework helping the assessment of the work reported here. This thesis advocates a networked model incorporating functionality for listening, playing and the synthesis of machine motivations. The latter incorporate dynamic relationships instructing the machine to either integrate with a musical context suggested by the human performer or, in contrast, perform as an individual musical character irrespective of context. Techniques of evolutionary computing are used to optimise system components over time. Evolution proceeds based on an implicit fitness measure; the melodic distance between consecutive musical statements made by human and machine in relation to the currently prevailing machine motivation. A substantial number of systematic experiments reveal complex emergent behaviour inside and between the various systems modules. Music scores document how global systems behaviour is rendered into actual musical output. The concluding chapter offers evidence of how the research criteria were accomplished and proposes recommendations for future research

Machinic affinities

Audio-Visionaries is a body of work that includes open-circuits and assemblages that create audio-visual outputs. Through electronic experimentation, exploration and improvisation the work practically investigates the notion of machinic affinities, whose theoretical implications this paper will investigate. The work, and this paper, engage in media archaeology as a methodology, an emerging field of media theory which re-examines forgotten or quashed ideas and practices dealing with media technologies. This methodology manifests itself in the work by employing everyday media machines, along with heirloom technologies, and by appropriating historical and contemporary interdisciplinary techniques, in order to reveal machinic liveness. The paper examines these techniques and their relationship to threads of both esoteric and popular philosophy, science and psychology that discuss the ontology of machines. Machinic affinity is a feeling of closeness or fondness for machines. For the purpose of this paper I will limit my discussion to machines of a specific nature, excluding computer technology in order to focus on a more general class of machines that generate audio or video media; media-machines. This affinity is precipitated by an animist belief; that all objects are living or have a spirit. This esoteric philosophy, often associated with primitive cultures, has been recently re-examined by contemporary theorists and artists. I will discuss how this discourse has influenced my art making

Improvisation Pedagogy: An Epistemological Perspective of the 4‘E’ Model within Digital Musical Instruments

Recent years have witnessed the appearance of many new digital musical instruments (DMIs) and other interfaces for musical expression (NIME). This paper highlights a well-established music educational background theory that we believe may help DMI developers and users better understand DMIs in the context of music cognition and education. From an epistemological perspective, we present the paradigm of enactive music cognition related to improvisation in the context of the skills and needs of 21st century music learners. We hope this can lead to a deeper insertion of DMIs into music education, as well as to new DMIs to be ideated, prototyped and developed within these concepts and theories in mind. We specifically address the theory generally known as the 4E model of cognition (embodied, embedded, extended and enactive) within DMIs. The concept of autopoiesis is also described. Finally, we present some concrete cases of DMIs and NIMEs, and we describe how the experience of musical improvisation with them may be seen through the prism of such theories

Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/

Contesting control: journeys through surrender, self-awareness and looseness of control in embodied interaction

As Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) engages with technologies that sense and actuate the body, there is a need to reconsider the human bodily experience. We present three case studies that each involve different forms of bodily experience: a breath-controlled amusement ride, a brain-controlled film, and an interactive musical duet with a physically actuated piano. We introduce a conceptual framework to describe how control becomes contested between human and computer in such experiences, using the three dimensions of: surrender of control, self-awareness of control, and looseness of control. We reveal how our experiences took users on journeys through control that traversed the space of these dimensions. We propose that our framework is not only relevant to playful cultural experiences, such as those charted in our case studies, but can also inform the design of embodied interaction more widely by emphasising the human experience of control when engaging with autonomous and bodily-focused systems, from future robots and vehicles to today’s gaze, speech and gestural interfaces

Computational composition strategies in audiovisual laptop performance

We live in a cultural environment in which computer based musical performances have become ubiquitous. Particularly the use of laptops as instruments is a thriving practice in many genres and subcultures. The opportunity to command the most intricate level of control on the smallest of time scales in music composition and computer graphics introduces a number of complexities and dilemmas for the performer working with algorithms. Writing computer code to create audiovisuals offers abundant opportunities for discovering new ways of expression in live performance while simultaneously introducing challenges and presenting the user with difficult choices. There are a host of computational strategies that can be employed in live situations to assist the performer, including artificially intelligent performance agents who operate according to predefined algorithmic rules. This thesis describes four software systems for real time multimodal improvisation and composition in which a number of computational strategies for audiovisual laptop performances is explored and which were used in creation of a portfolio of accompanying audiovisual compositions

Mobile-Based Interactive Music for Public Spaces

With the emergence of modern mobile devices equipped with various types of built-in sensors, interactive art has become easily accessible to everyone, musicians and non-musicians alike. These efficient computers are able to analyze human activity, location, gesture, etc., and based on this information dynamically change, or create an artwork in realtime. This thesis presents an interactive mobile system that solely uses the standard embedded sensors available in current typical smart devices such as phones, and tablets to create an audio-only augmented reality for a singled out public space in order to explore the potential for social-musical interaction, without the need for any significant external infrastructure

GenoMus: Representing Procedural Musical Structures with an Encoded Functional Grammar Optimized for Metaprogramming and Machine Learning

We present GenoMus, a new model for artificial musical creativity based on a procedural approach, able to represent compositional techniques behind a musical score. This model aims to build a framework for automatic creativity, that is easily adaptable to other domains beyond music. The core of GenoMus is a functional grammar designed to cover a wide range of styles, integrating traditional and contemporary composing techniques. In its encoded form, both composing methods and music scores are represented as one-dimensional arrays of normalized values. On the other hand, the decoded form of GenoMus grammar is human-readable, allowing for manual editing and the implementation of user-defined processes. Musical procedures (genotypes) are functional trees, able to generate musical scores (phenotypes). Each subprocess uses the same generic functional structure, regardless of the time scale, polyphonic structure, or traditional or algorithmic process being employed. Some works produced with the algorithm have been already published. This highly homogeneous and modular approach simplifies metaprogramming and maximizes search space. Its abstract and compact representation of musical knowledge as pure numeric arrays is optimized for the application of different machine learning paradigms.FEDER/Junta de Andalucia A.TIC.244.UGR20 Spanish GovernmentEuropean Commission PID2021-125537NA-I0