Jack Walker | Why not use humans? Affordances of machine agency in live electronics composition

Event details

Speaker: Jack Walker (University of Edinburgh)

Date:  Thursday 14 October  2021

Time: 5.15 - 6.45pm.  

Venue: Alison House, Lecture Room A 

Abstract

Predominately based around case studies from the Institute for Electronic Music’s ‘Inter_Agency’ research project, I will discuss live musicking practices that provoke machines into making ‘musical decisions’.  My core argument is that it is possible to understand these ‘decisions’ as things that are abstract enough to be enacted by both human beings and machines. This affords a language for communicating with humans and machines by using a common, high-level vocabulary: a control system that can be interpreted by people and technology alike. As I will demonstrate, exciting (or at least practical) musical things can occur when we achieve this unity of messaging structure. Aesthetically, this is a question of value. My primary motivation is to envisage a world in which people and tools can share a common (valuative) understanding of the musical experiences that they are entwined in. My values and desires as a composer (taste, style, ethic, etc) are things that can be stitched into the systems that I use as I work. If I do this well, then my systems should propagate these values for me.