One of the things I like to do (and have been doing for many years now) is to develop computer systems that explore machine creativity, in particular interactive music systems I can play with. The computer will listen to what I play on the piano keyboard, learn from it and start to talk with me. There is a lot of hard work behind this (like the programming stuff) but also a lot of fun when the computer surprises me with a musical dialogue I would have never expected. To be frank, in many ways it is a bit like playing with myself. This totally reminds me of Bill Evans’ “Conversations with Myself” (1963) and “Further Conversations with Myself” (1967), two of the most extraordinary jazz albums ever produced.
I will have one of these musical conversations with my system (the Interactive Musical Environments – iMe) at the 21st International Conference on Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts (DRHA2017) at Plymouth University on the 12th of September at 14:30h. If you are around, please come over and watch us playing. By the way, this time, I prepared a little ‘tweak’: whoever wants to participate will be able to do so with a smartphone app controlling some of the things the computer does in real time. That is the research bit of the performance. Hope you will enjoy it.
This is the main website of the Conference: DRHA2017.
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