Amplified Connections: Exploring Performative Co-Creation and Distributed Creativity in the Context of Accessible Music Creation Technologies

Abstract

In recent decades, interactive music systems have begun to be integrated into popular music performance. Advances in digital technology have enabled the inclusion of a large number of co-creators, encompassing even the contributions of audience members at live concerts in real time. In addition, autonomous music technologies have transformed into a readily accessible tool for both composers and system creators. These developments motivated this thesis project, which investigates the field of participatory performance via a focus on system design, use, and experience within popular-music concert environments. The thesis asks the following questions: How can interactive paradigms be integrated into live music performances, and how are they connected to the needs of both participating audience members and stage performers? What does the experience of these participatory systems depend on, and how can we typologize different ways of using them? Lastly, how do current autonomous concepts in music generation inform the design and use of interactive music performance systems? To address those questions, the thesis establishes its research context and approach in its opening theoretical part, which includes three framing chapters, then presents the results of its empirical work in the form of two preliminary studies and four articles that were completed within the research period. The framing section opens with the chapter titled Performance, which is focused on musical impact and audience response via the notions of musicking, embodiment, and musical gesture. The chapter titled Participation explores the use of these audience gestures to contribute to concert performances. It theorizes various concepts of distributed creativity with the help of postphenomenology and human-computer interaction (HCI), which it applies to the case of "audience instruments." The chapter titled Autonomy reviews aspects of artificial creativity with respect to its use in interactive music performance systems. Following two preliminary studies on audience gesture and performer motion, the empirical part of the thesis presents four articles. The first article is a study of audience participation involving the implementation of three interactive parts in an electronic live concert, followed by a self-report questionnaire, a group interview with audience members, and a performer interview. The second article turns to the further development of interaction software and analyzes the audience members’ behavior in more depth, generating, in turn, a user typology for the participants. The third article introduces autonomous concepts in interactive performance systems and suggests a three-dimensional model with the categories embodiment, participation and autonomy. The model is then applied to the analysis of nine intelligent music performance systems (IMPS) and reframed from the perspective of speculative design research. The fourth article engages with the mechanics of the systems’ intelligence and suggests certain alternative computation principles such as "symbiotic algorithms."