[ISEA2015] Paper: Arne Eigenfeldt – A Composer’s Search for Creativity Within Computational Style Modeling

Abstract (Long paper)

Keywords: Creativity, computational creativity, generative art, style imitation, David Cope, Experiments in Musical Intelligence, postmodernism.

Computational style modeling involves building a computational representation of the surface of musical works, one that captures features of rhythm, melody, harmony, and structure within its patterns. While such models are useful for musicological purposes, the creative use of these models to generate new music consistent within a given style raises a critical question: can generative music based upon a corpus be considered creative? This paper addresses this question, examining how creativity has been historically viewed, and discusses recent research into creativity. Examples of computational creativity by the author using both rule-based and corpus-based systems will be discussed.

  • Arne Eigenfeldt is a composer of live electroacoustic music, and a researcher into intelligent generative music systems. His music has been performed around the world, and his collaborations range from Persian Tar masters to contemporary dance companies to musical robots. He has presented his research at conferences and festivals such as the
    International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Sound and Music Computing (SMC), the International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC), the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Creativity and Cognition, EvoMusArt, Generative Art, and New  Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). He is a professor of music and technology at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, and is the co-director of the Metacreation Lab.

Full Text (PDF) p. 538-545