ACTANTS

4-channel human machine improvisation, Intonal, Malmö, 2023.

ACTANTS is a freely improvised piece, performed by an ensemble of artificial agents. The musical agents listen to each other and communicate, following the conduction of the composer on stage through physical gestures. The gestures are recognized by machine learning algorithms via Dynamic Time Warping techniques.

The agents interact with each other, moving in space, continuously changing their environment, and forming a perceived macro-structure in time. The causality and emergence arising from the intra- actions of these agents shape complex self-organizing behaviors. These sonic behaviors are used as the model for the sound composition, which is then guided by the human conductor in real-time. ACTANTS is part of Farzané’s current research on creative partnership with computers in the framework of free improvisation.