Artificial Life: Why Should Musicians Bother?

Journal article, 2003

No new technology appears in a society without causing changes to that society. Artists instinctively respond to these changes and the potential meanings of the technologies that bring them about. In this way, artists’ interest in technology goes beyond the simple desire to possess new tools for artistic expression. Artists serve to prepare society for the invisible changes going on within it by producing artworks in response to the mechanisms of change. This paper discusses the authors’ approaches to using concepts from artificial life in their musical works, which are basically of two kinds – artificial worlds producing music as an output, and interactive compositional tools using evolutionary algorithms to generate music and sound. It also provides a brief cultural context for these works.