Exploring aesthetics of non-representational data in machine improvisation
Research Project at Kunstuni Graz (KUG)

The performance is the outcome of a research project for speculative sound synthesis with Ji Youn Kang, Luc Döbereiner, David Pirrò, Leonie Strecker at Kunstuni Graz (KUG) exploring the aesthetic potentiality of non representational data in the framework of machine improvisation. Two live algorithms were developed and programmed to autonomously participate in an improvisational performance.
They handle decision making, sound generation, and spatialization tasks, communicating through internal computing processes and hardware performance data, rather than representational sonic data. This approach allows the agents to understand their improvisational environment and respond with sound generation based on recognized patterns within the hardware resource allocations of computational processes in improvisation. The aim is to re-think standard approaches to musical agent design in order to instantiate novel processes and to explore what aesthetics, possibilities, and new forms of collaboration and interfacing such systems can offer.