Human/Machine Co-Creation in Collective Performance Contexts: From Instruments to Agents


This area engages structured and freely improvised ensemble performance as the site of investigation. The research explores the myriad ways that non-human actors – both computational and biological – modulate experiences of gesture, intentionality, intersubjectivity and agency while shifting between perceived boundaries of instrument/performer/score/environment. The research examines new creative practices, and communities of practice that emerge from these contexts. Projects manifest as compositions, installations, performance pieces, workshops, critical scholarship, computational systems and qualitative studies.

Research in this area is supported by Van Nort’s SSHRC Insight Grant “Developing and Evaluating Computational Creativity for Collective Musical Improvisation” and Early Researcher Award “Improvising Machine Agents for Ensemble Musical Performance”.

The work centres around four main research projects:

Deeply Listening Machines

post-digital-instruments

Gesture, Intentionality and Temporality in Machine-Mediated Performance

Electro/Acoustic Comprovisation: Instruments, Identity, Language, Score