Understanding Musical Practices as Agency Networks (original) (raw)
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This thesis focuses on the analysis and simulation of the behaviour of cognitive systems – both biological and non-biological – which are able to process musical information (i.e., creative music agents). The research questions of this work are: How can we formally define a creative system? How can we formalise the behaviour of creative music agents? How can we simulate the behaviour of creative music agents computationally? Neither mathematical nor computational systems sophisticated enough exist that attempt to describe/simulate how music agents behave and form musical societies. To respond to the research questions a double approach based both on theoretical investigation and computer simulation is employed. Two formalised frameworks are proposed, i.e., General Creativity (GC) and Music Systems Theory (MST). GC attempts to extend the notion of creativity to non-biological systems. In doing so, GC provides a new definition of a creative system as well as of an iterative creative process. These notions are at the basis of MST, a theory which aims to describe how agents (both biological and non-biological) involved in musical activities interact with each other and create musical societies. By using systems theory, MST attempts to describe how single agents and musical societies evolve over time. The core concepts of GC and MST are used as a basis to design S(S(S)), an AI multi-agent system which has the double goal of creating convincing rock songs and of simulating a society of virtual songwriters which create songs, listen to the songs composed by their peers, and change their compositional style based on what they hear. S(S(S)) aims to provide an indirect proof of the validity of GC and MST. An exhaustive evaluation of S(S(S)) was carried out with expert rock musicians which demonstrated that the system shows an overall high level of creativity and that the single agents of the system are indeed capable of modifying their compositional style. This thesis provides several contributions. GC provides a formalise definition of creative systems which is valid for human and non-human systems, and which can be used as a basis for designing computational creative systems. MST is the first mathematical theory that attempts to formalise the behaviour of musical societies based on systems theory. S(S(S)) is one of the first systems that is able to show a degree of transformational creativity. The thesis also shows by example that the simultaneous use of theoretical and computational modelling is an effective tool for tackling complex musical issues, and it is hoped that it will form the theoretical and methodological basis for future research in this rapidly advancing field.
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Music today is more ubiquitous, accessible, and democratized than ever. Thanks to technologies such as high-end home studios, audio compression, and digital distribution, music now surrounds us in everyday life, almost every piece of music is a few minutes of download away, and almost any western musician, novice or expert, can compose, perform and distribute their music directly to their listeners from their home studios. But at the same time these technologies lead to some concerning social effects on the culture of ...
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