Improvising AI
Developing what, following Robert Rowe, we could call ‘Machine Musicanship’ is one of the most dynamic areas of research into Computational Creativity, itself a sub-domain of AI research. Creating systems that can learn, evaluate and interact with human musicians in ways that are not only musically credible, but also possibly creative, is a major challenge. It also obliges us to think hard about what we mean by creativity or improvisation as we try to develop machine and software architectures that emulate these complex human capacities. Can this process ever achieve its objectives or will there always be something missing?
It is too early to say yet, but at Improtech in Athens, from September 26th to 29th some of the most brilliant researchers, musicians and theorists will gather to discuss, exchange and perform alongside the most cutting-edge computational improvisation systems. See the full program here: https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/improtech-2019
The questions raised by research into musical human-machine interaction are relevant far beyond the field of music. Our life and world are more and more linked to systems that are based on cognitive architectures that attempt to model the human brain and the decisional or creative processes that are at the heart of what we believe being human is. So, as we interact with such systems in areas as diverse as health, finance, urban planning or surveillance and delegate evaluation and decision-making to them, understanding what the implications are is a matter of supreme importance.
Improtech Paris-Athens 2019 is co-organised by IRCAM (France), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Onassis Stegi (Athens).
In the context of a global culture based on computational formalism, AI’s creativity seems valid. But can we really talk about an all-encompassing system to progress? Just wondering.