Composing without Composers? : Creation, control and individuality in computer-based algorithmic composition

Abstract

The combination of a longstanding fascination with artificial life and developments in digital technology provide opportunities for constructing computer-based intelligences that exhibit some of the characteristics of individual personalities with significant musical competencies. Digital technologies, in many different areas of musical application, are participating in this development and the relationships between humans and computers are changing as a consequence. Composers, who have often sought to remove themselves from the act of creation, are becoming able to approach composition in new ways. However, the novel potential for creating algorithmic composing agents and the development of a networked society, will also force composers to confront and accommodate anxieties about the loss of individual creative identity in a digital age.