Artificial Life: Why Should Musicians Bother?
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 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.
music composition
artificial life
genetic algorithms
interactive evolution
algorithmic composition