Type: 10 - The Living Score is characterized by the use of intelligent computation systems as a co-creational other inside the flow of musicking. There are several different approaches to the implementation of computational intelligence within the digital score with each offering differing degrees of felt co-operation, presence and autonomy.

About

Solaris by Craig Vear and Fabrizio Poltronieri (visuals).

FREEDOM. TOGETHERNESS. EMERGENCE.

This digital score is a jazz quartet created from 3 creative-AI agents (piano, bass and TR909 drum machine) and a single human musician (drum kit). It uses abstract visual notation and the behaviours of creative AI to stimulate relationships inside music that are used to communicate musical ideas to the human. The creative-AI is built using an approach called Embodied Intelligence (Vear 2022) and exemplifies the application of the Human-AI Musicking Framework (Vear et al 2023). Solaris uses Creative AI datasets and algorithms to make music from inside the flow (Vear et al 2024).

Embodied Intelligence differs from other music-AI approaches insofar that it is not using AI to construct the physical phenomena of music (sound wave), nor the meta-workings of music composition (sequencing of notes). Instead, the AI is powering the realtime generation of core impetus from within the dynamic flow of live music-making (Poltronieri & Vear 2024, Small 1998). The digital score is both an agent expressing itself by joining in with the “musicking” through symbolic rules, and a visual notation tool. Overall, this AI digital score has been designed to make humans more creative.

Further details

Analysis (using the 7 modalities - LINK)

Interface Object

The music idea embedded in Solaris is communicated through the visual and hearing senses. An additional critical aspect of communications is the operational presence of the AI.

Material Affect

The material aspects of communication that affectual connect with the musician in Solaris are balanced between three domains: the sounding world, the visual poetics and the operational behaviour of the AI

The sounding world is relatively easy to comprehend: Solaris is improvising in a free-jazz world, that is linked to chords and the jazz theory of George Russell. So the sound of this jazz world, however abstract, is one affectual tendril.

The 2nd and 3rd are more abstract, yet need to work in sympathy with the sounding world so as not to distract or confuse the human musician. The first of these is the visual poetics and what the AI chooses to show in each moment, and what the human chooses for it to represent. It is the flow and changes of these images and the abstract meaning they offer in-the-moment that is of primary concern.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the AI’s presence, its behaviours in the flow/musicking dance; the human musicians’ perception of it co-creating with ME as a partner in the dance.

Goal

The goal of this digital score is rather simple, to create an improvised flow-based, post-modern, free, math-AI jazz sound.

Content

The primary signals that convey meaning in Solaris a balanced combination between the sounding world, visual poetics and the behaviours presence of the AI INSIDE the flow of musicking. Individually each of these aspects operate as expected: it sounds like jazz, the abstract images look like jazz inspired abstract expressionism (although not designed explicitly to represent this), and the AI feels like it is responding in the hear-and-now (sic). But there is another layer that emerges out of this, which is the perception of “my” awareness of its awareness of “me”, and perhaps the feeling of it having a perceptual experience (Robert Kirk) in the shared flow. It is this connection between the AI and the human (in this case the PI Vear), and the human’s perception of the AI’s connection with him, through the flow that is of primary concern and contains the primary content for the musical idea.

Language

The language of this digital score is both iconic and sensory and is balanced between the 3 sensorial domains: the sound world uses abstractions of well known jazz tunes and sequences, the resultant improvisation sounds like jazz; the visual poetics offer abstract shapes, textures and colours that allude to musical representation along the lines of Stockhausen, Wolff, Kandinsky and Miro; and the flow/musicking dance of the AI’s behaviour feels like a jazz quartet improvising in realtime.

Feedback

The feedback is felt directly through the flow/musicking dance that is created in realtime. And like an all-human quartet it offers different sets of relationships that are designed to invite, inspire, confuse, play, or support the flow.

Flow

Flow in Solaris should be understood by the relationships that are generated in realtime between the human and the AI. This is a direct emulation of the flow/musicking dance that can be created between all-human ensembles, but yet is never a guaranteed event. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say, then, that the flow should be understood by the constant poking and prodding, sensing and awareness of the human, and the AI, across these relationships to stimulate creativity. This was the true aim - and hope - of the AI programming.