Improvisation for humans and automatons

Short description

• Our goal will be to build automatic digital musical instruments that can improvise in a group of humans and other automatons.
• We will measure how much creative humans and automatons can be when playing together.
• Also, we will try to establish a documentation of the behaviours implemented in improvisation.

Long Description

First, here is a short glossary to precise some terms in the context of this project:

Improvisation: the action of making a spontaneous creative choice in response to another creative action “listened”.
Robot:  automaton, bot, program. I agree, “robot” is not really adapted in this  case, but I like to think that “robot” can be more easily humanised  (humanoid) than “program”. “Automaton” seams to be technically more  appropriate here.
Action: output: basically a sound with a length, a tone, an intensity played by an actor with a instrument (analogue or digital)
Actor: action emitter: human or automaton.

This track idea comes from previous personal researches concerning improvisation. Applications of those researches can be found here, but if you lacks of time, you can just read this table that sums up the basic reactions involved in improvisation between two actors.

Basic creative communication process:

Actor A produces action 1 –> Actor B responds to action 1 by producing action 2  –> …

At this point, actor B had to choose between the following actions:

• Reaction
• Imitation
• Complement
• Quote
• Silence
• Chaos

…And had to choose to perform this action after the emission of action 1, or in the same time:

• Following
• Simultaneous

As you can see those reactions can be written as a program.
I would like to try to code automatons to answer to human inputs, and test how creative it can be.
I  have a pretty precise idea of how it can be done in theory, and what  kind of conclusions it can lead to: I suspect the conclusion will be  something like:
Humans and automatons can improvise together only because of the presence of humans in the improvisation group.
In  other words, two automations can’t improvise together because of the  lack of conscience, and social abilities intelligence and cultural  level,.
Even if my intentions are  clear, I want it to be a collaborative work. That explains why my first  draft was a bit blurry and full of questions. I want to see this track  enriched by the participant’s culture, theoretical and technical skills.
Tools  : Processing or Python or PureData? I really want the tool to be chosen  in collaboration. I personally have the skills to draft something that  work, but I am sure we can build a tool that is more interesting and  powerful with more hands and brains.