Abstract
Current AI research tend to focus on large models with a mimetic focus in a black-box computational paradigm. When exploring musical human-algorithm interaction in an improvisational setting, this may not be the most interesting and viable path, as also very simple systems can give very interesting results. I will here share an ongoing artistic research exploration of a particular kind if human-machine interaction, where the algorithms are extremely small and simple.
Certain kinds of algorithms make you feel that there is another musician present. They feel like agents, even though they may be dead stupid. What makes us feel like that? What happens to me when I play with such an algorithm? What happens to the system of me and the algorithm? And how simple can an algorithm be, while still being perceived as "another", as an agent? By making the algorithms as small as possible, we can focus on the transformative effects of human-machine interactions, and the human-machine synergies, and study concepts such as actual and perceived agency, and proportions of human/tool agency.
A preview of the topic can be found in this lecture-performance video:
https://youtu.be/4Z6bO1s3Mu8?si=Op61DoLx3F8wyfXK
Bio
Palle Dahlstedt (Sweden, b.1971) Composer, sound artist, improviser and researcher. Studied piano, harpsichord and composition (MA, MFA), and a PhD (2004) in AI algorithms for contemporary composers. Dahlstedt is currently professor of Interaction Design and lecturer in electronic music composition at the University of Gothenburg. His research interest is the deep entanglement of art and advanced technology, developing new technologies for computer-aided improvisation, composition and art, for embodied performance on electronic sounds, and technologies enabling new kinds of interactions, based on a systems view of emergence from human-technology interactions. He has contributed technologies and theories to the field of computational creativity, and has published extensively.
Dahlstedt shares his time between the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg, where he teaches electronic music composition, and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, where he is Professor of Interaction Design. He has also been Obel Professor of Art & Technology at Aalbrog University (2015-2018, adj prof 2019-2024).