Guide to Unconventional Computing for Music

Guide to Unconventional Computing for Music

Eduardo Reck Miranda Editor Guide to Unconventional Computing for Music 123

Editor Eduardo Reck Miranda University of Plymouth Plymouth UK ISBN 978-3-319-49880-5 ISBN 978-3-319-49881-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49881-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958473 Springer International Publishing AG 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface Back in the late 1940s, scientists in Australia installed a loudspeaker on the CSIR Mk1 computer, which was one of only a handful of electronic computers in the world at the time. Programmers would use the loudspeaker to play a sound at the end of their program to notify the operator that the machine had halted. The field of Computer Music was born in 1951, when Geoff Hill, a mathematician with a musical upbringing, had the brilliant idea of programming the Mk1 computer to play back an Australian folk tune for an exhibition at the inaugural Conference of Automatic Computing Machines in Sydney. This is allegedly the first time a computer produced music live for an audience. Computers have played a pivotal part in the development of the music industry ever since, and this trend will most certainly continue. From the vantage point of a classical contemporary music composer, it would be fair to assert that those classical composers who were interested in exploring the potential of computing technology for their métier have been playing a leading role in the development of new music technology and the music industry since the 1950s. And as we shall see in this book, we still are: a number of authors here are either professional or amateur musicians. Classical contemporary music may not always appeal to large audiences, but it can most certainly impact on how music that is more amenable to mass consumption is made. The Beatles, for instance, are known for admiring the music of, and being influenced by, the highly innovative German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. They even put Stockhausen s picture on the cover of their famous Sgt. Pepper s album. Classical computer music, the genre of classical music in which computing technology plays an important role in composition or performance, or both, is now firmly established. Anyone interested in predicting the future of pop music should peep at the bold developments of classical computer music for clues. I would say that the first grand milestone of classical computer music took place in 1957 at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, with the composition Illiac Suite by Lejaren Hiller. Hiller, then a professor of chemistry, collaborated v

vi Preface with mathematician Leonard Isaacson to program the ILLIAC machine to compose a string quartet. ILLIAC, short for Illinois Automatic Computer, was one the first computers built in the USA. Hiller transcribed manually the outcomes from the machine s calculations onto a musical score for a string quartet: 2 violins, 1 viola and 1 violoncello. Various important inventions and developments took place since, notably the invention of the transistor and subsequently the development of the microchip. The microchip enabled the manufacturing of computers that became progressively more accessible to a wider sector of the population, including, of course, composers. The second grand milestone took place in the early 1980s at IRCAM in Paris, with Répons, an unprecedented composition by the celebrated French composer Pierre Boluez. IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/ Musique) is a renowned centre for research into music and technology founded in 1977 by Boulez himself. Répons, for chamber orchestra and six solo percussionists, was the first significant piece of classical music to use digital computing technology to perform live on stage: the machine listened to the soloists and synthesized audible responses on the spot, during performance. In order to achieve this, Boulez used a pioneering computer music system, called 4X System, developed at IRCAM by Italian physicist Giuseppe Di Giugno and his team. Répons and the 4X System represent the beginning of an era of increasingly widespread use of digital computers to perform live on stage together with musicians. Indeed, they mark the beginning of our present time, where personal computers, laptops, notebooks, tablets and even smart phones are used in musical composition and performance. What is next? It is difficult to predict the next milestone, but it is highly possible that it will entail unconventional computing in many ways, hence the rationale for putting together this pioneering book. In February 2015, I saw the premiere of my composition Biocomputer Music, at Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival, in Plymouth, UK. Biocomputer Music was composed with the first version of an unprecedented interactive musical biocomputer that we are developing in my laboratory at Plymouth University s Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR). The biocomputer was implemented with living organic components, referred to as biomemristors. The machine was set up to listen to the piano and generate responses in real time, which were played back on the performer s piano through electromagnets that set the strings into vibration (Fig. 1). This work is introduced in Chaps. 2 and 8, and a short documentary introducing this work is available online (Miranda 2014). And in June 2016, my former Ph.D. student Alexis Kirke premiered his piece Superposition Symphony at Port Eliot Festival, in St. Germans, a Cornish village situated only 14 miles from Plymouth. Superposition Symphony is an amazing duet for a soprano and a quantum computer. The voice of the singer was relayed live to a quantum

Preface vii Fig. 1 Edward Braund and the author (on the piano) testing the interactive musical biocomputer in the ICCMR lab computer located at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, USA. The machine listened to the singing and generated respective accompaniments, which were sent back to loudspeakers in St. Germans for playback during the performance. A movie illustrating this project is available online (Kirke 2016). The field of Unconventional Computing for Music is rapidly emerging, including a number of initiatives that were not necessarily thought of in terms of unconventional computing as such, but rather in terms of unconventional interfacing, hacking and circuit bending. For instance, in Chap. 3, Berlin-based composer and performer Marco Donnarumma introduces his work into biophysical music. Donnarumma has been looking into creating computer music instruments where the physical and physiological properties of the performers bodies are interlaced with the devices materials and computational properties. And in Chap. 5, Ezra Teboul, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York, introduces the intriguing world of silicon luthiers: developers of electronic and computer music instruments with circuit bending and new interfacing ideas. These works point to a harnessed connectivity between humans and machines, far beyond of the connectivity provided by today s keyboard mouse screen interfaces. This book begins with an introduction to the field of unconventional computing by University of York s Susan Stepney (Chap. 1) followed by an introduction to the field of unconventional computing and music (Chap. 2) by the ICCMR team. Chapters 3 5 introduce the topics mentioned above: physical computing, silicon luthiers and music with quantum computing. Then, Chap. 6, by Martin Trefzer, also

viii Preface from the University of York, introduces the memristor: a new electronic component that is bound to revolutionize how computers are built in the future. Next, Chaps. 7 and 8, by Andy Adamatzky and his team at the University of the West of England, and the ICCMR team, respectively, introduce experiments and practical applications of memristors in music. Finally, ICCMR s Alexis Kirke introduces IMUSIC, an unconventional tone-based programming language, which enables us to program computers using musical phrases. Target Audience Postgraduate students, and researchers in academia and private sector will find here a valuable source of information for basic and applied research. Some of these chapters may require advanced knowledge of mathematics and computing to follow, but undergraduate students in computing, engineering and music will find this book useful to gain an understanding of key issues in the field. It is recommended for students aspiring to pursue postgraduate studies in computer music and associated topics. By the end of this book, the reader will have gained first-hand information about the exciting new field of Unconventional Computing for Music. Plymouth, UK Eduardo Reck Miranda References Kirke, A. (2016). Superposition. Available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- S5hU4oMWag Miranda, E. R. (2014). Biocomputer Music: A Composition for Piano & Biocomputer. Available on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/111409050

Contents 1 Introduction to Unconventional Computing.... 1 Susan Stepney 2 On Unconventional Computing for Sound and Music... 23 Eduardo R. Miranda, Alexis Kirke, Edward Braund and Aurélien Antoine 3 On Biophysical Music... 63 Marco Donnarumma 4 The Transgressive Practices of Silicon Luthiers.... 85 Ezra Teboul 5 Experiments in Sound and Music Quantum Computing... 121 Alexis Kirke and Eduardo R. Miranda 6 Memristor in a Nutshell... 159 Martin A. Trefzer 7 Physarum Inspired Audio: From Oscillatory Sonification to Memristor Music... 181 Ella Gale, Oliver Matthews, Jeff Jones, Richard Mayne, Georgios Sirakoulis and Andrew Adamatzky 8 An Approach to Building Musical Bioprocessors with Physarum polycephalum Memristors... 219 Edward Braund and Eduardo R. Miranda 9 Toward a Musical Programming Language... 245 Alexis Kirke Index... 279 ix

Contributors Andrew Adamatzky Unconventional Computing Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Aurélien Antoine Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK Edward Braund Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK Marco Donnarumma Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany Ella Gale School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Jeff Jones Unconventional Computing Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Alexis Kirke Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK Oliver Matthews Unconventional Computing Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Richard Mayne Unconventional Computing Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK Eduardo R. Miranda Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR), Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK Georgios Sirakoulis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, Greece Susan Stepney Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK Ezra Teboul Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA Martin A. Trefzer Department of Electronics, University of York, York, UK xi