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MESSAGE FOLLOWS:
With apologies for cross-posting. Please circulate:
You are most welcome to attend the next 'Directions in Musical Research' seminar
at the Institute of Musical Research
Thursday 5 February 2009 at 5-6.30 pm
Eduardo Miranda (University of Plymouth)
Chair: Peter Bentley (UCL)
A-Life for Music: on Making Music with Computer Models of Living Systems
The field of Artificial Life, or A-Life studies all phenomena characteristic of natural living systems, through computational modeling, wetware-hardware hybrids, and other artificial media. Its scope is rather large, ranging from
the investigation of the emergence of cognitive processes in natural or artificial systems to the development of life or life-like properties from inorganic components.
A number of musicians, in particular composers, have started to turn to A-Life for inspiration and working methodology. For instance, a number of techniques to compose music with the aid of computers have been developed based on, or inspired, by A-Life models. In this seminar I will briefly review some of these techniques and then I will introduce my own work in this field. I will attempt to demonstrate why I find A-Life useful, inspiring and interesting for music composition.
I shall focus particularly on a compositional method that I have developed using an A-Life modeling paradigm known as "cellular automata". Time permitting, I shall also briefly introduce the notion of using A-Life modeling to build systems to simulate and study the emergence of music in a group of artificial interacting individuals (e.g., software models or
robots). A fundamental notion here is that cultural evolution can be modeled through similar basic principles of variation and selection that underlie biological evolution.
Room NG 14 (North Block, Ground Floor), Senate House, Malet Street, London
(click on 'Finding IMR seminar rooms', at www.music.sas.ac.uk <http://www.music.sas.ac.uk/> )
Nearest Tubes: Russell Square, Euston Square, Goodge Street
Open to the public. Free of charge. No booking required
Prof. Katharine Ellis
Institute of Musical Research
School of Advanced Study
University of London
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU
Tel: 020 7664 4866 (direct)
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http://www.music.sas.ac.uk <http://www.music.sas.ac.uk/>
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