Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This implies that our interactive habits are developed quite differently with a
digital tool. When playing an acoustic instrument, we can typically offload a large
amount of cognitive work into muscle memory, which, with practice, can handle
common tasks such as locating consonant notes and moving between timbres. An
alternative to this development of embodied habituation for computational systems
is the use of automation and macros that can capture repeated processes and actions.
This type of process encapsulation is inherent to many generative computer com-
position systems including
Max/MSP
,
8
Supercollider
,
9
Impromptu
10
and so on. The
hierarchical arrangement of motifs or sections that this type of encapsulation allows
is well suited to music compositional practices. These come together in an inter-
esting way in the software program
Nodal
,
11
in which generative note sequences
and cycles can be depicted as graphs of musical events (nodes). Nodal allows for
the creation of any number of musical graphs and for the user to interact with them
dynamically. The behaviour of individual nodes can be highly specific, providing
confidence in the exact detail of music generated, while musical fragments and riffs
can be set up as independent graphs that “capture” a musical idea. However, despite
this level of control and encapsulation, the interactions between nodes and graphs
can give rise to surprisingly complex and engaging outcomes.
7.3.4 Interactivity
One of the affordances of computational systems is the shift from the traditional
interactive paradigm, in which one action results in one musical response, to “hy-
perinstruments”, which can respond to actions with multiple, structured events. This
can be seen as meta-level composition or performance, described by Dean as “hy-
perimprovisation” (Dean
2003
), where a computational improvisatory partner does
more than react to human responses.
McCullough (
1996
) advises that dynamic control over high level operations
rather than low level details yields a sense of control over a complete process in
tool usage generally. This kind of meta-control is typical of manipulating generative
processes. Beilhartz and Ferguson (
2007
) argue that the experience of connection
and control for generative music systems is critical; “The significance of generative
processes in an interactive music system are their capability for producing both a
responsive, strict relationship between gesture and its auditory mapping while de-
veloping an evolving artifact that is neither repetitive nor predictable, harnessing the
creative potential of emergent structures” (Beilhartz and Ferguson
2007
, p. 214).
As a consequence of the more structured possibilities for tool-use relation-
ships, many different kinds of control flow exist within computational creative tools
