Narrative-inspired generation of ambient music

An author might read other written works to polish their own writing skill, just as a painter might analyze other paintings to hone their own craft. Yet, either might also visit the theatre, listen to a piece of music, or otherwise experience the world outside their particular discipline in search of creative insight. This paper explores one example of how a computational system might rely on what they have learned from analyzing another distinct form of expression to produce creative work. Specifically, the system presented here extracts semantic meaning from an input text and uses this knowledge to generate ambient music. An independent measures experiment was conducted to provide a preliminary assessment of the system and direct future work

Experimental Approaches to the Composition of Interactive Video Game Music

This project explores experimental approaches and strategies to the composition of interactive music for the medium of video games. Whilst music in video games has not enjoyed the technological progress that other aspects of the software have received, budgets expand and incomes from releases grow. Music is now arguably less interactive than it was in the 1990’s, and whilst graphics occupy large amounts of resources and development time, audio does not garner the same attention. This portfolio develops strategies and audio engines, creating music using the techniques of aleatoric composition, real-time remixing of existing work, and generative synthesisers. The project created music for three ‘open-form’ games : an example of the racing genre (Kart Racing Pro); an arena-based first-person shooter (Counter-Strike : Source); and a real-time strategy title (0 A.D.). These games represent a cross-section of ‘sandbox’- type games on the market, as well as all being examples of games with open-ended or open-source code

MediaScape: towards a video, music, and sound metacreation

We present a new media work, MediaScape, which is an initial foray into a fully interdisciplinary metacreativity. This paper defines metacreation, and we present examples of metacreative art within the fields of music, sound art, the history of generative narrative, and discuss the potential of the “open-documentary” as an immediate goal of metacreative video. Lastly, we describe MediaScape in detail, and present some future directions

The Second Death of Concept Albums World-Building and Unification Strategies in the Age of Streaming

As the end of the album format is apparently drawing near due to the radical change in music consumption habits motivated by streaming services, artists and genres interested in creating musical works with meanings broader than those of single songs find themselves in a situation worth analysing. Despite all appearances and expectations, I argue that nowadays artists willing to create narrative, thematic or generally conceptual contexts for their songs are living in a potential second golden age of concept albums. Some attempts at keeping the (concept) album alive are more alike to an act of resistance, others creatively take advantage of the same means of communication used by their digital enemy, in order to create something unique and capable of taking the place of the supposedly doomed CD/lP format. They are often transmedial works, thus requiring an interdisciplinary analysis. In this paper, I offer an overview of the contemporary situation of the album format (and concept album more specifically) and finally propose a classification of four forms of contemporary musical world-building strategies, starting from a selection of emblematic case studies.As the end of the album format is apparently drawing near due to the radical change in music consumption habits motivated by streaming services, artists and genres interested in creating musical works with meanings broader than those of single songs find themselves in a situation worth analysing. Despite all appearances and expectations, I argue that nowadays artists willing to create narrative, thematic or generally conceptual contexts for their songs are living in a potential second golden age of concept albums. Some attempts at keeping the (concept) album alive are more alike to an act of resistance, others creatively take advantage of the same means of communication used by their digital enemy, in order to create something unique and capable of taking the place of the supposedly doomed CD/lP format. They are often transmedial works, thus requiring an interdisciplinary analysis. In this paper, I offer an overview of the contemporary situation of the album format (and concept album more specifically) and finally propose a classification of four forms of contemporary musical world-building strategies, starting from a selection of emblematic case studies

FM radio: family interplay with sonic mementos

Digital mementos are increasingly problematic, as people acquire large amounts of digital belongings that are hard to access and often forgotten. Based on fieldwork with 10 families, we designed a new type of embodied digital memento, the FM Radio. It allows families to access and play sonic mementos of their previous holidays. We describe our underlying design motivation where recordings are presented as a series of channels on an old fashioned radio. User feedback suggests that the device met our design goals: being playful and intriguing, easy to use and social. It facilitated family interaction, and allowed ready access to mementos, thus sharing many of the properties of physical mementos that we intended to trigger

Come to Daddy? Claiming Chris Cunningham for British Art Cinema

Twenty years after he came to prominence via a series of provocative, ground-breaking music videos, Chris Cunningham remains a troubling, elusive figure within British visual culture. His output – which includes short films, advertisements, art gallery commissions, installations, music production and a touring multi-screen live performance – is relatively slim, and his seemingly slow work rate (and tendency to leave projects uncompleted or unreleased) has been a frustration for fans and commentators, particularly those who hoped he would channel his interests and talents into a full-length ‘feature’ film project. There has been a diverse critical response to his musical sensitivity, his associations with UK electronica culture – and the Warp label in particular – his working relationship with Aphex Twin, his importance within the history of the pop video and his deployment of transgressive, suggestive imagery involving mutated, traumatised or robotic bodies. However, this article makes a claim for placing Cunningham within discourses of British art cinema. It proposes that the many contradictions that define and animate Cunningham's work – narrative versus abstraction, political engagement versus surrealism, sincerity versus provocation, commerce versus experimentation, art versus craft, a ‘British’ sensibility versus a transnational one – are also those that typify a particular terrain of British film culture that falls awkwardly between populism and experimentalism

A Concise History of Western Music for Film-makers

The use of music in films has become almost ubiquitous in both drama and documentary. Music is used regularly in cinema, broadcasting and more recently, in interactive media. Yet audiences often criticise makers for its overuse, especially in actuality television. The problem is not merely concerned with the volume and placement of music, but of the internal nature and structure of the musical material itself. This article contextualises the history of western music in a way which may be able to help inform film makers and broadcasters about how music might be used more advantageously to accompany moving pictures

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities