Musical complex adaptive systems (CASs)

ABSTRACT:

In this seminar, we will present the recent outcomes of the author’s research on musical complex adaptive systems (CASs). First, we will focus on the concepts of adaptation and complexity within the framework of CASs and the musical domain. The analysis involves a distinction of the notions of context and information between the engineering field of information theory and the philosophical one of radical constructivism. We conclude this section by showing that, in this approach, information and context are mutually determining. Then, we will introduce algorithmic composition techniques related to the notion of evolvability in biology and genetic algorithms. These techniques distribute adaptation across higher levels and allow the system to reorganize the relationships among its agents and their structure circularly while interpreting and constructing its context. The result is an increased complexity and long-term variety in music systems during autonomous evolutions.

BIO:

Dario Sanfilippo is a music feedback systems specialist, performer, composer, audio programmer, teacher, and researcher. He received his PhD in computer music from the University of Edinburgh and his research focuses on the exploration of new music through artificial intelligence and artificial life implemented via complex adaptive systems. His work combines principles of agency, autopoiesis, evolvability, fitness, and radical constructivism for the design of complex audio feedback networks that are deployed in live performance for human-machine interaction or autonomous machines.