Musical metacreation (MuMe) is an emerging term describing the body of research concerned with the automation of any or all aspects of musical creativity. It looks to bring together and build upon existing academic fields such as algorithmic composition, generative music, machine musicianship and live algorithms. Metacreation involves using tools and techniques from artificial intelligence, artificial life, and machine learning, themselves often inspired by cognitive and life sciences. MuMe suggests exciting new opportunities for creative music making: discovery and exploration of novel musical styles and content, collaboration between human performers and creative software partners, and design of systems in gaming, entertainment and other experiences that dynamically generate or modify music.

This concert featured five very different MuMe systems that interact with humans in very different ways. Some systems will listen to a performer and attempt to learn what is going on musically, and make performance decisions based upon this knowledge. Other systems will compose music on the spot – using rules defined by the designer, or learned from musical examples provided prior to the concert – to which the performer must react.

Curated by Oliver Bown and Arne Eigenfeldt

Systems by:

• Arne Eigenfeldt
• Doug Van Nort
• Michael Young
• Shelly Knotts
• George Lewis

Performances by:

• François Houle, clarinet
• Daryl Jahnke, guitar
• Lisa Cay Miller, piano