When
Thematic Session 2: Software and Synthesis (Monday, 15:40)
Abstract
Neural synthesis, involving an algorithm with no conception of the human body or indeed a musician’s embodied technique, throws up many questions when being incorporated into composition and performance. This presentation will assess the present and future of making music with such AI, using significant research into embodied practice by Spatz, Schwab, and others as a starting point. While the use of neural networks has parallels with well-established musical incorporations of electronically/algorithmically generated material and found sound, there are important distinctions which will be explored. The various ways of using material generated by neural synthesis into new work (as raw audio, transcribed/translated material, or other) and their implications on an embodied musical practice will also be reviewed. Further, the conceptual implications of such AI and its effects on an embodied practice will be surveyed, touching on issues of being/becoming, mimesis, and posthumanism. My own work and that of others, including current and upcoming/possible developments in this field, will form the basis of this presentation, with a view to elucidating a comprehensive embodied perspective on musical AI through a practice-based research framework.
Bio
Darragh Kelly is an Irish composer/musician and doctoral researcher at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester’s Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music, PRiSM. He is interested in the ineluctable dialectics of the virtual vs the actual, subject vs object, the bathetic, the ecstatic, new music's ageing, and tonality's afterlife. Recent work seeks to re-embody the output of neural networks and treat these systems as external organs of the body—a body in excess. He is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre. In 2021, he received the Arts Council of Ireland Music Bursary, funding research and training in machine learning. He was awarded the Arts Council Next Generation Award for 2022, receiving €25,000 to support his work and practice.