This paper discusses the design and evaluation of an artificial agent for collaborative musical free improvisation. The agent provides a means to investigate the underpinnings of improvisational interaction. In connection with this general goal, the system is also used here to explore the implementation of a collaborative musical agent using a specific robotics architecture, Subsumption. The ar...

We examine the human creative process involved in performing with Mimi (Multimodal Interaction in Musical Improvisation), a system designed for human-machine music improvisation on a keyboard or other MIDI instrument. Mimi makes use of a factor oracle data structure to generate new musical material based on seed material from a human performer. Used in conjunction with a MIDI interface that giv...

Improvised acting is a viable technique to study expressive human communication and to shed light into actors’ creativity. The USC CreativeIT database provides a novel, freely-available multimodal resource for the study of theatrical improvisation and rich expressive human behavior (speech and body language) in dyadic interactions. The theoretical design of the database is based on the well-est...

We investigate novel challenges involved in comparing model performance on the task of improvising responses to hip hop lyrics and discuss observations regarding inter-evaluator agreement on judging improvisation quality. We believe the analysis serves as a first step toward designing robust evaluation strategies for improvisation tasks, a relatively neglected area to date. Unlike most natural ...

Musical improvisation offers an excellent experimental paradigm for the study of real-time human creativity. It involves moment-to-moment decision-making, monitoring of one's performance, and utilizing external feedback to spontaneously create new melodies or variations on a melody. Recent neuroimaging studies have begun to study the brain activity during musical improvisation, aiming to unlock...

This chapter explores a specific and unique aspect of the craft music education by addressing particular pedagogical challenge of: how do we teach musical improvisation improvisationally? The response offered to this question is in two parts: first concerned with what are trying when improvisation, second should improvisation. A greater understanding provides us knowledge about teaching improvi...

Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a participatory, relational and embodied art form which eschews standard concepts in aesthetics. We present our ongoing research into the mechanisms underlying the lived experience of "togetherness" associated with such practices. Togetherness in collective dance improvisation is kinaesthetic (based ...

Notions of subjectivity and individuality pervade the discourse around jazz non-idiomatic improvisation. While plays an important role musical improvisation, tendency to focus on player(s) – analysing their particular improvisatory approach(es) has muddied broader structure at issue: where event goes beyond players leads them unforeseen outcomes. In this paper I reassess in improvised music by ...