Intro

‘Today it is becoming increasingly common for the composer to turn to the sciences to supplement his or her compositional model’. On the other hand scientists also seem to show interest in the organisational principles found in music. We are particularly interested in promoting such interdisciplinary activities. Our motivation is twofold. On the one hand it is believed that scientific models carry an important component of human thought, namely formal abstraction, which can be very inspiring for music composition. On the other hand we would Iike to raise certain questions like: ‘What can be the justification for using science as a compositional tool’, or ‘Which aspects of science are applicable to music and how it can be done’. Obviously there are no simple answers for these and indeed we do not intend to provide any here. We believe though that each artist should be able to make her or his own judgements. As far as these questions are concerned, the work introduced in this paper is to be regarded only as a contribution for empirical experimentation. Our research work attempts to identify correlation among different disciplines such as biology, crystallography, and computing, in order to investigate the possibility of composing music inspired by a framework of interdisciplinary knowledge.

• Eduardo Reck Miranda was bom in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1963. He graduated in Data Processing Technology at Vale do Rio dos Sinos University, in Sao Leopoldo, Brazil in 1985 and went on to study electroacoustic music in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia between 1986 and 1991 . In 1991 he attained a Master Degree in Music Technology at the University of York, in England. Meanwhile he studied Philosophy, Discrete Mathematics, and Music Composition at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he also worked as a composer and researcher in computer science applied to music. Eduardo is cunently reading for a Doctor Degree in Philosophy at the Faculty of Music and Department of Artificial Intelligence of Edinburgh University, in Scotland. His research work involves Artificial Intelligence, aided Signal Processing, and Algorithm Composition. Last year he also studied computer music at Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Full text p.95-109