Outward Threads - Intuitive Computers / Rational Composers
(2025)
author(s): Juan Sebastián Vassallo
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
The project ‘Outward Threads’ is an artistic investigation rooted in music composition, integrating computational frameworks from machine learning and artificial intelligence to create new music. It seeks to develop a fresh approach to established compositional methodologies within computer-assisted composition, as well as incorporating novel tools. Some of these contributions, including the development of creative software tools, are discussed. Theoretically, the project examines various forms of creative cognition and their manifestation in Western art contemporary music composition, drawing insights from cognitive sciences and AI. These discussions provide a framework for presenting each composition within the project and serve as starting points for exploring individual creative processes, methodologies, and techniques. The goal is to deepen the understanding of these cognitive processes and their interactions in the creative process, aiming to bridge the gap between purely neurocognitive approaches and practice-based research. In a broader context, the project examines ethical aspects of music and composition and the composer’s role in society. Finally, it considers the impact of new technologies -particularly generative AI- on creative processes and discusses influential practitioners and current trends in the field.
\\Computing Counterpoint
(2025)
author(s): Francesco Elgorni
published in: KC Research Portal
How can counterpoint be computed?
Instead of looking at counterpoint solely from a historical perspective and reducing it to "music trend of the past", the research contemplates counterpoint as generative technique while exploring its immense yet mechanical creative power through a small selection of case-studies.
Finally, a few thoughts are spent on the meaning of rules in music and the role of the computer in historically informed practice is briefly investigated.
The Ever Changing Instrument
(2024)
author(s): Anders P. Jensen
published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
The project explores the artistic potential of unpredictability, specifically within the context of electronic music. By referring to an original instrument design—including programming a number of randomized systems—a series of compositions for keyboard instruments were developed. The central theme is the relationship between dialogue and loss of control during the creative process. This project was documented intermediately with new music, as well as technological and procedural reflections.
Emergent properties – intra-acting with algorithms
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Marco Döttlinger
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The artistic research project ‚Emergent properties – intra-acting with algorithms‘ aims to map structural features of the contemporary digital apparatus to the domain of experimental electro-acoustic music composition and improvisation. In an iterative performance and live-coding practice, generative and machine learning algorithms are explored and exploited.
The main hypothesis is that emergent properties occur in and through human-machine intra-actions. Human and Nonhuman actors – computational processes, or algorithmic agents – gain an emergent agency in the process: algorithms are not just tools that are (artistically) used by human subjects to solve some problems and accomplish certain tasks. Their usage, design, misuse or misappropriation is understood as artistic decision-making and leads to unpredictable and surprising sonic artifacts.
An important research direction is the question of how intra-action of humans and algorithms infects this assemblage at diverse layers. Further, it raises questions about the ontology of electro-acoustic music, about authorship and the agency of human creators.
the long now
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Marco Döttlinger, Patrik Lechner
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
'The Long Now - flowing with the algorithmic other' delimits the perceptual space and explores the materialities used (code, sound, image) in their temporal dimensions in order to understand an experience of time as an introspective, mental and, at the same time, physical experience: an intra-active flowing with the algorithmic other.
While performing, our two custom live-coding systems communicate with each other. This means that the audio level is informed by the visual level and vice versa; they are, so to speak, entangled or form entangled agencies: the two sides do not exist before their intra-actions.
In the context of performing with algorithmic agents or other non-human technological entities, we can observe a mutual and reciprocal adaptation that takes place in a constantly evolving feedback loop. This loop leads to the emergence of properties that could neither be designed nor invented from an external perspective of control or analysis. Our project aims to make this emergence potential artistically tangible.
ALMAT - Iteration RK
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Hanns Holger Rutz, David Pirrò, Ronald Kuivila, Daniele Pozzi
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Discourse and materials pertaining to the experimental iteration with Ron Kuivila, during the Algorithms that Matter (Almat) artistic research project.
ALMAT - Continuous Exposition
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Hanns Holger Rutz, David Pirrò
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Continuous Exposition is a dissemination strategy of the project Algorithms that Matter (ALMAT). It serves as an entry point to the mesh of our activities.
ALMAT aims at understanding the increasing influence of algorithms, translating them into aesthetic positions in sound. It builds a new perspective on algorithm agency by subjecting the realm of algorithms to experimentation and diffractive reading.
Between Freedom and Fixity: Artistic Reflections on Composition and Improvisation
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Ilya Ziblat Shay
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Between Freedom and Fixity: Artistic Reflections on Composition and Improvisation is a practice-based research project that aims to highlight the role of freedom and fixity in music and to develop a discourse based on these two concepts. The research suggests a creative approach based on the interrelationship between freedom and fixity, for example their combination, juxtaposition, and tension, and describes them as abstractions or placeholders for musical agents such as rhythm, notes, structure, timeline, and interactive computer systems. Another important notion is the inherent coexistence of the two concepts, and proposing the constant oscillating between them as a creative musical approach. Furthermore, the research aims to establish the use of freedom and fixity as a productive paths for extra-musical disciplines. Four works by the author are used as case studies to examine the integration of the research concepts as tangible musical forms. In each of the case studies freedom and fixity are embodied differently, and the relationships between them develop into distinct paths. This study relies on the author’s experience and experimentation as a composer, performer, improviser, and electronic-music practitioner, and draws inspiration from works by other musicians and scholars.
Anemone Actiniaria
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Hanns Holger Rutz, David Pirrò
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Algorithmic project, where two computer music systems, written by Hanns Holger Rutz and David Pirrò, collide. In progress.
TN_pieces: On Applied Network notions and "Chain Reaction" as compositional strategy
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Juan Parra
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
A series of works designed within the framework of MTT, aimed to:
Play with different notions of "Network": as algorithm, as descriptor for telematics, as compositional tool (like in "Timbre Networks")
Use each iteration/performance to inform/affect/define/enrich the "following" performance. This will be achieved by preserving one aspect of the performance that can be perceived as "highly volatile" (a dancer reacting to the highly improvised music. like in the first version) and convert it into a digital stream of data, mapped to control (and therefore, automatise) an aspect of the following performance.
On Stockhausen Solo(s)
(last edited: 2016)
author(s): Juan Parra, Johannes (Jos) Mulder
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Using Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Solo für Melodieinstrument und Rückkoppelung (1965 - 66) as starting point for investigating the affect and effect of technological transference when reproducing historical repertoire with live electronics, we aim to shed light on the misconception of “transparency” of sound reinforcement and current digital media, and how this colouring can (and perhaps should) be used to inject new life and ask new questions to the works it aims to preserve. On the footprint of a rendition that will aim to reflect as close as possible the original performance tradition of the piece, we will later allow the possibilities of current Network, signal processing and reinforcement technology shape and colour a radical interpretation of simultaneous Solo(s).
How can counterpoint be computed? Instead of looking at counterpoint solely from a historical perspective and reducing it to "music trend of the past", the research contemplates counterpoint as generative technique while exploring its immense yet mechanical creative power through a small selection of case-studies. Finally, a few thoughts are spent on the meaning of rules in music and the role of the computer in historically informed practice is briefly investigated.open exposition comments (1)
The project explores the artistic potential of unpredictability, specifically within the context of electronic music. By referring to an original instrument design—including programming a number of randomized systems—a series of compositions for keyboard instruments were developed. The central theme is the relationship between dialogue and loss of control during the creative process. This project was documented intermediately with new music, as well as technological and procedural reflections.open exposition comments (0)
Discourse and materials pertaining to the experimental iteration with Ron Kuivila, during the Algorithms that Matter (Almat) artistic research project.open exposition comments (1)
Continuous Exposition is a dissemination strategy of the project Algorithms that Matter (ALMAT). It serves as an entry point to the mesh of our activities. ALMAT aims at understanding the increasing influence of algorithms, translating them into aesthetic positions in sound. It builds a new perspective on algorithm agency by subjecting the realm of algorithms to experimentation and diffractive reading.open exposition comments (0)
Algorithmic project, where two computer music systems, written by Hanns Holger Rutz and David Pirrò, collide. In progress.open exposition comments (0)
Using Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Solo für Melodieinstrument und Rückkoppelung (1965 - 66) as starting point for investigating the affect and effect of technological transference when reproducing historical repertoire with live electronics, we aim to shed light on the misconception of “transparency” of sound reinforcement and current digital media, and how this colouring can (and perhaps should) be used to inject new life and ask new questions to the works it aims to preserve. On the footprint of a rendition that will aim to reflect as close as possible the original performance tradition of the piece, we will later allow the possibilities of current Network, signal processing and reinforcement technology shape and colour a radical interpretation of simultaneous Solo(s).open exposition comments (0)