The Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music

With the ongoing development of algorithmic composition programs and communities of practice expanding, algorithmic music faces a turning point. Joining dozens of emerging and established scholars alongside leading practitioners in the field, chapters in this Handbook both describe the state of algorithmic composition and also set the agenda for critical research on and analysis of algorithmic music. Organized into four sections, chapters explore the music's history, utility, community, politics, and potential for mass consumption. Contributors address such issues as the role of algorithms as co-performers, live coding practices, and discussions of the algorithmic culture as it currently exists and what it can potentially contribute society, education, and ecommerce. Chapters engage particularly with post-human perspectives - what new musics are now being found through algorithmic means which humans could not otherwise have made - and, in reciprocation, how algorithmic music is being assimilated back into human culture and what meanings it subsequently takes. Blending technical, artistic, cultural, and scientific viewpoints, this Handbook positions algorithmic music making as an essentially human activity.

Alex McLean is Post-Doctoral Researcher in Deutsches Museum on the PENELOPE project, co-founder of the TOPLAP live coding and Algorave algorithmic dance music movements, and co-initator of the International Conference on Live Coding, International Conference on Live Interfaces, and the Festival of Algorithmic and Mechanical Movement.

Roger T. Dean is Professor of Sonic Communication at the MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, and is also a composer, improvisor, and researcher. He founded and directs the ensemble austraLYSIS and is the author of several books on computer and algorithmic music.

Contents

Section 1: Grounding algorithmic music
1. Musical Algorithms as Tools, Languages and Partners: A Perspective
Alex McLean, Roger T. Dean
2. Algorithmic Music and the Philosophy of Time
Julian Rohrhuber
3. Action and Perception: Embodying Algorithms and the Extended Mind
Palle Dahlstedt
4. Origins of Algorithmic Thinking in Music
Nick Collins
5. Algorithmic Thinking and Central Javanese Gamelan
Charles Matthews

Perspectives on Practice A
6. Thoughts on Composing with Algorithms
Laurie Spiegel
7. Mexico and India: Diversifying and Expanding the Live Coding Community
Alexandra Cardenas
8. Deautomatization of Breakfast Perceptions
Renate Wieser
9. Why Do We Want Our Computers to Improvise?
George Lewis

Section 2: What can algorithms in music do?
10. Compositions Created with Constraint Programming
Torsten Anders
11. Linking Sonic Aesthetics With Mathematical Theories
Andy Milne
12. Machine Learning and Listening in Composition and Performance
Rebecca Fiebrink and Baptiste Caramiaux
13. Biologically-Inspired and Agent-Based Algorithms for Music
Alice Eldridge and Oliver Bown
14. Performing with Patterns of Time
Thor Magnusson, University of Sussex, Alex McLean, FoAM Kernow
15. Computational Creativity and Live Algorithms
Geraint Wiggins and Jamie Forth
16. Tensions and Techniques in Live Coding Performance
Charlie Roberts and Graham Wakefield

Perspectives on Practice B
17. When Algorithms Meet Machines
Sarah Angliss
18. Notes on Pattern Synthesis
Mark Fell
19. Performing algorithms
Kristin Erickson

Section 3: Purposes of algorithms for the music maker
20. Network music and the algorithmic ensemble
David Ogborn
21. Sonification != music
Carla Scaletti
22. Color is the Keyboard: Transcoding from Visual to Sonic
Margaret Schedel
23. Designing Interfaces for Musical Algorithms
Jamie Bullock, Integra Lab, Birmingham Conservatoire
24. Ecooperatic Music Game Theory
David Kanaga
25. Algorithmic Spatialisation
Jan C Schacher

Perspectives on Practice C
26. Form, Chaos and the Nuance of Beauty
Mileece I'Anson
27. Beyond Me
Kaffe Matthews
28. Mathematical Theory in Music Practice
Jan Beran
29. Thoughts on Algorithmic Practice
Warren Burt

Section 4: Algorithmic Culture
30. The Audience Reception of Algorithmic Music
Mary Simoni
31. Technology, Creativity and The Social in Algorithmic Music
Christopher Haworth
32. Algorithms and Computation in Music Education
Andrew Brown
33. (Micro) Politics of Algorithmic Music: Towards a Tactical Media Archaeology
Geoff Cox and Morten Riis
34. Algorithmic Music for Mass Consumption and Universal Production
Yuli Levtov

Perspectives on Practice D
35. Algorithmic Trajectories
Alex McLean and Roger Dean