Humans create tools to make tasks easier. When the tool no longer works as intended, we discard or repurpose it for another utility. Our relationship with technology is like a transactional ouroboros, our behaviors influenced by human imperfections that machines were designed to eliminate. 

Computers distort the human-tool relationship, possibly due to their ephemerality in form factor and intended purpose. In merely a few decades, a machine that once encompassed an entire tabletop now rests comfortably in a jacket pocket. Tasks that once required several specialized instruments now reside in a single device. Such is the nature of our digital existence. 

(If there were a moment in this narrative to insert a casual reference to AI, here it is).

We want our computers to improvise because humankind is always improvising, and we need our tools to respond to our shifting priorities. “Everything is always turning into something else,” wrote the poet Kenneth Koch. “As we’re sitting here talking, monkeys are jumping around in the trees, and waves are going across the Hudson, and new poets are being born, and covers are coming off books … I mean, all sorts of things are going on.”

For this piece, Suss Müsik interpreted form and structure through improvisational reconstitution. Handmade electronic devices, built from discarded 1990’s computer hardware and a hacked Glitch Storm bitmap sequencer, manipulated acoustic timbres from plucked cellos to create unpredictable looping patterns. These were iteratively refactored until the tonic and non-tonic diffused, suggesting a "broken" musicality that transgresses common assumptions of sonic beauty.

The piece is titled Ultracrepidarians, a word to describe a group of people who express strong opinions about something beyond their expertise.

More on the 651st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Why Compute? — The Assignment: Respond to a prompt from George E. Lewis — at https://disquiet.com/0651/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Disquiet Junto Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

Disquiet Junto Discussion: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0651-why-compute/67663

Ultracrepidarians [Disquiet 0651]

More on the 651st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Why Compute? — The Assignment: Respond to a prompt from George E. Lewis — at Disquiet Junto Project 0651: Why Compute? – Disquiet

Electric Dreams (disquiet0651)

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0651: Why Compute?, which is based on a prompt by musician and Columbia University professor George E. Lewis. Lewis asks, “Why do we want our computers to improvise?”.

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0651 discussion thread on Lines:
My response to George E. Lewis's question "Why do we want our computers to improvise?" is - they can help create, influence, untangle and/or open up fresh neural pathways within our brains in discovering new approaches for our music compositions.

More than half the music I create usually involves some form of non-human generative or semi-generative improvisation to collaborate with. In the past, the collaborators have been various computer programs or hardware systems like the Monome Norns. Lately, it's been the modular synthesizer, though I did use my MacBook Pro here.

Three tracks were produced in Ableton Live with the help of a generative sequencer called TATAT by K-Devices. I improvised accompanying tracks using a K-Board MIDI keyboard. The synth plugins used were Slate + Ash Choreographs and Cycles, Fors Tela, and Sonic Beds 1.0 by Jogging House. Reverb effects were by Phonolyth Cascade.

More on the 651st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Why Compute? — The Assignment: Respond to a prompt from George E. Lewis — at Disquiet Junto Project 0651: Why Compute? – Disquiet
The cover image for this project uses a photo by Ioan Sameli, thanks to a CC BY-SA 2.0 license; it’s been cropped and text has been added to it.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Intel_8742_153056995.jpg 1
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Conical and Concentric References [disquiet0651]

Inspired by this week's Disquiet Junto project, I have composed a new Musical Bots track - these are the compositions I create using the generative MIDI sequencer Transition (free VST plugin available at http://www.codefn42.com/transition/index.html). The answer to the question "why do we want our computers to improvise?" seems pretty obvious to me - because tracks like this are created that would never be created otherwise. So I let the musical bots answer that question, and the answer - this track - is also the proof of its correctness...

All instruments were played by groups of bots, with a high degree of randomness in pitch and probability. Additional randomness was introduced to determine whether a particular instrument was playing or paused.

In the background is a field recording I made at Coombe Haven (near Fowey in Cornwall).

The track art is a photograph kindly provided by @the_robocat, also taken on the beach at Coombe Haven.

More on the 651st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Why Compute? — The Assignment: Respond to a prompt from George E. Lewis — at https://disquiet.com/0651/

Musical Bots dream of Cornish Beaches  (Disquiet0651)

Disquiet Junto Project 0651: Why Compute?
The Assignment: Respond to a prompt from George E. Lewis.

Lewis asks, “Why do we want our computers to improvise?”
I, for myself, to be surprised by the improvisations.
But not too much.
That's why half of this track is made up of repeating patterns and the other half of patterns that change through computing slightly (!) with every interation.

More on the 651st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Why Compute? — The Assignment: Respond to a prompt from George E. Lewis — at https://disquiet.com/0651/

Discussions https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0651-why-compute/

Subsidiary Surprise [disquiet0651]

In response to the recent Disquiet Junto challenge:

This week’s prompt was proposed by George E. Lewis, musician, music theorist, music professor at Columbia University, and artistic director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Lewis is the composer-in-residence at this year’s Musikfestival Bern.

Lewis asks, “Why do we want our computers to improvise?”

This week’s project: record a piece of music that responds in some way to Lewis’ question.

An answer could be, that it helps with creativity. 
For this track Randolon sequencer (by Charles E. Platel) plays Glockenspiel and Arctic Swells (Spitfire audio LABS). I added a track created with Havoxicon ( by Johan van Kreij).



Conversation about feelings with a nice robot (disquiet0651).

The 651st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Why Compute?
The Assignment: Respond to a prompt from George E. Lewis
Disquiet Junto Project 0651 – https://disquiet.com/0651/

The cover image for this project uses a photo by Ioan Sameli, thanks to a CC BY-SA 2.0 license; it’s been cropped and text has been added to it.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Intel_8742_153056995.jpg

即興 - Improvisation #1 [Disquiet0651]

Experimentation with Bitwig's FX Grid, processing a Harmony Bloom generated sequence with various randomisers, such as dice, sample and hold, and logical arithmetic based on several channels of source. The result was then further modified with Infiltrator 2, and Sampleson's Haptic Perc, and Xils-Lab La Palme.

Conversation about feelings with a nice robot (disquiet0651).

Peppermint