A meeting of musical minds – workshop on performance, creativity, and AI

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Grand piano and electronics in a recording studio

About this event:

Category:
Research
Event type:
Booking required | In-person
Admission:
Free Registration required
Location:
Silk Street Music Hall

Event information

Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently transforming our society and has opened up completely new avenues in many research fields, including music. Music AI research has focused mainly on the generation of music material - mostly in the context of composition. This overlooks a central aspect about music - music making entails multiple dialogues: between performer and audience; between performers as they play together; between composer and performers. While sonic materials are the primary component in these dialogues, gestures, facial expression, breathing patterns and other subtle forms of communication are also important. Since 2022 Composer Oded Ben-Tal and pianist David Dolan have been developing an artistic-research project which puts musical dialogues between human and an Artificial ‘Intelligence’ at its heart. Live, real-time, unconstrained improvisation based on mutual listening between Dolan and a system Ben-Tal is developing.  

Based on this work, In 2024 Ben-Tal joined with Dr. Örjan de Manzano (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics) to further develop this research with funding from the Volkswagen Foundation:  “Creative musical dialogues between human and machine: a novel approach to studying improvisation and joint action”. Their aim is to open up new avenues of investigating musical dialogues through the prism of real-time human-computer improvisation. As part of this project we are convening a mini-conference to share our findings within a wider research and creative contexts, including both current and potential future paths. We aim to explore questions such as: understanding joint creative actions and how AI can better support human creativity; understanding the relationship between internal creative processes and their outcomes; offering new insights into long-standing questions about how music is created, expressed and shaped in real time; investigating the integration of AI technology into realms that were deemed until very recently the preserve of humans. 

If you are interested and would like to find out more, please contact Dr Oded Ben-Tal on o.ben-tal@kingston.ac.uk

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Schedule & Participants & FAQs

Venue information

Silk Street Theatre, Music Hall and Lecture Recital Room are located in the main Guildhall School building on Silk Street and for Barbican produced events the venue can also be accessed from the Barbican if you exit via the doors next to Barbican Kitchen on Level G. 

Address:
Silk Street
Barbican
EC2Y 8DT
Accessibility:
Accessibility
Parking:
Parking available

Parking information