A Subsumption Agent for Collaborative Free Improvisation

Linson, Adam; Dobbyn, Chris; Lewis, George; Laney, Robin

doi:10.1162/comj_a_00323

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…This intention may seem contradictory as it involves a loss of performer control but it is relatively common, especially among DMI artists who perform improvised music (e.g. Lewis 2000; Linson, Lewis, Dobbyn & Laney, 2015). Another related approach is simply to incorporate randomisation features, such as a SuperCollider patch for randomising the instrument’s mapping design (e.g.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the motivations for building new digital musical instruments

Emerson

Egermann

2018

Musicae Scientiae

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Over the past four decades, the number, diversity and complexity of digital musical instruments (DMIs) has increased rapidly. There are very few constraints on DMI design as such systems can be easily reconfigured, offering near limitless flexibility for music-making.Given that new acoustic musical instruments have in many cases been created in response to the limitations of available technologies, what motivates the development of new DMIs? We conducted an interview study with ten designers of new DMIs, in order to explore 1) the motivations electronic musicians may have for wanting to build their own instruments; and 2) the extent to which these motivations relate to the context in which the artist works and performs (academic vs. club settings). We found that four categories of motivation were mentioned most often: M1: wanting to bring greater embodiment to the activity of performing and producing electronic music; M2: wanting to improve audience experiences of DMI performances; M3: wanting to develop new sounds, and M4: wanting to build responsive systems for improvisation. There were also some detectable trends in motivation according to the context in which the artists work and perform. Our results offer the first systematically gathered insights into the motivations for new DMI design. It appears that the challenges of controlling digital sound synthesis drive the development of new DMIs, rather than the shortcomings of any one particular design or existing technology.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the motivations for building new digital musical instruments

Emerson

Egermann

2018

Musicae Scientiae

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“…It will also yield direct implications for music technology. Results will reveal repercussions of the popular recording technique of overdubbing, and our quantitative measures of improvised musical coordination can be incorporated into artificial interactive music systems (Gillick et al, 2019;Linson et al, 2015) and benefit music pedagogy by automating assessment of ensemble performance.…”

Section: Coordination In Interacting Improvising Musicians Setzler Goldstonementioning

confidence: 94%

Coordination and Consonance Between Interacting, Improvising Musicians

Setzler

Goldstone

2020

Open Mind

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Joint action (JA) is ubiquitous in our cognitive lives. From basketball teams to teams of surgeons, humans often coordinate with one another to achieve some common goal. Idealized laboratory studies of group behavior have begun to elucidate basic JA mechanisms, but little is understood about how these mechanisms scale up in more sophisticated and open-ended JA that occurs in the wild. We address this gap by examining coordination in a paragon domain for creative joint expression: improvising jazz musicians. Coordination in jazz music subserves an aesthetic goal: the generation of a collective musical expression comprising coherent, highly nuanced musical structure (e.g., rhythm, harmony). In our study, dyads of professional jazz pianists improvised in a “coupled,” mutually adaptive condition, and an “overdubbed” condition that precluded mutual adaptation, as occurs in common studio recording practices. Using a model of musical tonality, we quantify the flow of rhythmic and harmonic information between musicians as a function of interaction condition. Our analyses show that mutually adapting dyads achieve greater temporal alignment and produce more consonant harmonies. These musical signatures of coordination were preferred by independent improvisers and naive listeners, who gave higher quality ratings to coupled interactions despite being blind to condition. We present these results and discuss their implications for music technology and JA research more generally.

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“…Similarly, Odessa is another example of a computational agent used to understand musical improvisation activities. Odessa is an artificially-intelligent agent used for cognitive modeling of human-interactive musical behavior ( Linson et al, 2015 ). The model was used to evaluate a collaborative musical improviser through subsumption, a robotics architecture.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons From Joint Improvisation Workshops for Musicians and Robotics Engineers

Carter

Papalexandri-Alexandri

Hoffman

2021

Front. Robot. AI

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We report on a series of workshops with musicians and robotics engineers aimed to study how human and machine improvisation can be explored through interdisciplinary design research. In the first workshop, we posed two leading questions to participants. First, what can AI and robotics learn by how improvisers think about time, space, actions, and decisions? Second, how can improvisation and musical instruments be enhanced by AI and robotics? The workshop included sessions led by the musicians, which provided an overview of the theory and practice of musical improvisation. In other sessions, AI and robotics researchers introduced AI principles to the musicians. Two smaller follow-up workshops comprised of only engineering and information science students provided an opportunity to elaborate on the principles covered in the first workshop. The workshops revealed parallels and discrepancies in the conceptualization of improvisation between musicians and engineers. These thematic differences could inform considerations for future designers of improvising robots.

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A Subsumption Agent for Collaborative Free Improvisation

Cited by 14 publications

References 32 publications

Exploring the motivations for building new digital musical instruments

Exploring the motivations for building new digital musical instruments

Coordination and Consonance Between Interacting, Improvising Musicians

Lessons From Joint Improvisation Workshops for Musicians and Robotics Engineers

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