Genetic Improvisation Model a framework for real-time performance environments

Numerous tools for improvisation have appeared over the last few years – increasing numbers of researchers are realizing the value in the improvisational approach to creativity. Improvisational methods have been successfully employed by human performers for thousands of years; yet, until recently, these methods have remained untouched by most engineers and technical artists to whom they would seem relevant. Projects such as Voyager [1], Galapagos [2], ChaOs [3], Swarm Music [4], and others, while not always being explicitly improvisational, explore media-informational spaces in nearly-improvisational ways, allowing the user to modify the exploratory process in the course of exploration. In our work we attempt to expand this research direction, trying to create a playground for building non-idiomatic1 improvisational environments. Non-idiomatic improvisation has always been considered a kind of process that doesn't lend itself to modeling; by its nature it seeks to defy any fixed model as a complete description of its behavior. A good improviser is one who is able to simultaneously avoid algorithmic description, always surprising his audience, and appeal to some aesthetic criteria (local or global2) in shaping his performance. In improvisational contexts, it is common practice to describe the characteristics and success of a performance in terms of global aesthetic criteria; one of the most intuitive and widely used has been termed energy. Why is it a useful concept? First, energy is a popular analogy with improvising3 musicians and artists; many of them regard it as a convenient metaphor to think about one’s improvisational talents (“Zorn has a great energy”). Second, speaking in terms of energy enables us to think about