Oded Ben Tal: Live, Interactive Electronic Music as a Complex System

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Researcher and composer Oded Ben-Tal from Kingston University, London, will present his talk  “Live, Interactive Electronic Music as a Complex System” on Thursday, October 6, at 10 a.m., in the ArtLab.

As seats are limted, please register by writing to events@ae.mpg.de.

Abstract

I will be discussing an approach to live electronic music from based on computational creativity. The real-time interaction between the performers and the computer makes use of machine listening and computational decision making to open a space for musical dialogue between the musicians and the computer. I will examine this approach from the perspective of complex dynamic systems, placing the human-computer interaction within a wider set of relationships. From this perspective, composing equates to constructing a complex system with the performer(s) and the computer as key players within a wider network of interdependence. I will illustrate the talk with examples and a live demonstration.

About the Speaker

Oded Ben-Tal is a composer and researcher working at the intersection of music, computing, and cognition. His compositions range from purely acoustic pieces, to interactive, live electronic pieces and multimedia work. In recent years he is particularly interested in the interaction between human and computational creativities. Together with Dr. Bob Sturm he developed research applying deep learning to folk musics and interrogating the creative capacity of the resulting generative system within the folk tradition as well as outside it. He is also using AI-inspired approaches in the domain of interactive, live electronic music. Machine listening techniques combined with algorithmically steered processes open space for musical dialogue, in real-time, between human performers and computer counterparts. 

In 2022 he launched the Datasounds, Datasets and Datasense research network which aims to identify core questions that will drive forward the next phase in data-rich music research, focused in particular on creative music making. Stemming out of his own compositional interests in relating human and machine creativities and broadening the scope to consider the implications as well as applications of computational means used to make music, understand it, and engage with it.