Inter_agency: Composing sonic human-computer agent networks

The project Inter_agency aims to explore the relationship between musicians and intelligent computer systems from a compositional perspective. Our goal is to create compositions in which both the musician and the computer are able to listen to each other and act in response to each others actions. This approach requires the design of computer software that exhibits intelligent, human-like behaviour: software that is able to listen. The computer analyses the instrumental sound and responds to it in real-time, by generating its own sound material. At the same time, the musician listens to the sound material generated by the computer and responds to it, adapting his/her behaviour to that of the computer, according to the composers instructions. The compositions that we describe cannot be documented in the form of fixed musical scores, since they are subject to the instant interaction between the musician and the computer. This, in turn, means that each performance of a composition is different than the previous one. In this context, composition expands from composing sounds to composing sonic interactions, an approach that implies a totally different understanding of composition and performance practice. In order to test our hypotheses we will create several compositions as case studies. In doing so, we will work in collaboration with the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI) and the musicians of ensembles Klangforum Wien and Schallfeld. In our collaboration with the musicians we will be able to test the software that we develop and experiment with it not only technically, but also aesthetically. In addition to the two main researchers, Artemi-Maria Gioti and Gerhard Eckel, three internationally renowned composers working in the field of Music and Artificial Intelligence will be invited for a residency at the IEM in Graz and will contribute to the project by developing compositions/installations. The results of the project will be disseminated through concerts, lectures, scholarly publications, a young composers workshop and an international conference.

The project addressed the desideratum of human-computer symbiosis in electro-instrumental music and aimed at enhancing human-machine communication in compositions for acoustic instruments and electronics by incorporating intelligent agent-based systems in them. The frame of reference for the project was Rowe's player paradigm, a model in which the musician and the computer are co-actors in a reciprocal interaction. The software agent perceives human actions through machine listening and acts in response to them and according to internal generative processes. The project produced a large number of musical works composed and performed internationally (Artemi-Maria Gioti's Converge/Diverge, Imitation Game, and Bias, produced in cooperation with the ensembles Schallfeld and Klangforum Wien) and led to the formation of two small ensembles: utrumque (Gerhard Eckel and Ludvig Elblaus) and 0x03 (Luc Döbereiner, Gerhard Eckel and Ludvig Elblaus). These ensembles co-created a large number of highly interactive pieces, mostly based on acoustic and structural feedback realised through various forms of networked entanglement among the performers and performance spaces. Through all these cooperations among composers and performers, arts-based research was strengthened as a collective and collaborative practice. For certain types of close collaboration (e.g. in the ensembles), the arts-based research formed an important precondition, establishing the necessary forms of communication and explication for the co-creation. The importance of feedback processes on various levels (acoustic, electro-mechanical, digital, and conceptual) was found to be essential to design intelligent agent-based music systems, and led to a refinement of the initial hypotheses of the project as well as the formulation of followup projects. As a central tool, acoustical modelling of the site as an important extension of site-specific music practices has been developed and tested in various collective composition projects. Most of the transdisciplinary aspects of the project were located in this area, where room and instrument acoustics research, instrumental and digital performance techniques and co-creative composition approaches mutually informed and enhanced each other.