While recent techniques of digital sound synthesis have put numerous new sounds on the musician's desktop, several artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques have also been applied to algorithmic composition. This article introduces Vox Populi, a system based on evolutionary computation techniques for composing music in real time. In Vox Populi, a population of chords codified according to MIDI protocol evolves through the application of genetic algorithms to maximize a fitness criterion based on physical factors relevant to music. Graphical controls allow the user to manipulate fitness and sound attributes.

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We present a novel paradigm for the interactive composition and performance of music called Roboser consisting of a real-world device (i.e., a robot), its control software, and a composition engine that produces streams of MIDI data in real time. To analyze the properties of this framework, we present the application of Roboser to a learning mobile robot, called EmotoBot, that is controlled by the Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC) architecture. The EmotoBot composition is based on the generation of real-time sound events that express sensory, behavioral, and the internal states of the robot's control model. We show that EmotoBot produces a complex set of sonic layers and quantify its ability to generate complex emergent sonic structures. We subsequently describe further applications of the Roboser framework to other interactive systems, including a large-scale interactive exhibition called Ada. Our results show the potential of the Roboser paradigm to define the central-processing stage of interactive composition systems. Moreover, Roboser provides a general framework for transforming information from real-world systems into complex sonic structures and as such constitutes a real-world composition system.

SYNOPSISWhile much is now known about the operation and organisation of the brain at the neuronal and microcircuit level, we are still some way from understanding it as a complete system from the lowest to the highest levels of description. One way to gain such an integrative understanding of neural systems is to construct them. We have built the largest neuromorphic system yet known, an interactive space called 'Ada' that is able to interact with many people simultaneously using a wide variety of sensory and behavioural modalities. 'She' received 553,700 visitors over 5 months during the Swiss Expo.02 in 2002. In this paper we present the broad motivations, design and technologies behind Ada, and discuss the construction and analysis of the system.