Music 102: Formal Systems

Prof. Michael Casey, Dartmouth College, Winter 2009

Music102: 3-Ecological and Artificial Life Systems

Reading

• David Dunn, "Cybernetics, SoundArt and the Sacred", unpublished article, 2004
  
• Karl Simms, "Evolving Virtual Creatures", Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH, 1994 Video available here.
• Ollie Bown and Geraint Wiggins, "On The Meaning of Life (in Artificial Life Approaches to Music)", Computational Creativity Workshop, University of London, 2007

Assignment

Read these three articles. Also listen to David Dunn's Autonomous and Dynamical Systems.

Choose *one* of the following and write a short essay (1000-1500 words):


• Write a critical response to the relationship between David Dunn's article and the music examples on his Web page and the listening assignment above.
  
  
• Discuss possible artificial life scenarios for music drawing from Karl Simms' work. Include a description of a possible new musical work based on an articifical life scenario.