User Experience
To start, each user selects a particular piece of music from a list of available pieces. The pieces are short passages of electronic dance music (EDM), composed of up to five distinct parts (bass, drums, synth, and strings). The piece that the user selects represents him/her in the environment. The user then explores and traverses various musical spaces in the environment, occupying first one space, then another. Whenever a user enters or leaves a space, a new music mix is automatically generated from the strands of occupying users' selected works.
We anticipate that users will seek out spaces which conform to their musical tastes. They will congregate in spaces with other users who have similar or complimentary music tastes. A sort of flocking behavior results as users choose spaces inhabited by other users with similar musical tastes.
A music software environment facilitates the automatic, real-time analysis, creation and mixing of music within each space. The software manipulates notes within and amongst music pieces, allowing disparate musical elements to be transformed and combined into coherent new pieces. A fractal compression scheme is used to map harmonic and rhythmic structure. Genetic algorithms are used to optimize musical well-formedness. The music engine makes musically-intelligent adjustments to blend and combine strands of music from disparate musical sources. Musical qualities of source pieces are often still audible, even in new permutations. Addtionally, the software has intelligence to introduce and foster variations from existing and combined material.
As new pieces are created automatiically, they will be added to the list of pieces available to each user. Thus musical characteristics and styles will evolve as newly-generated pieces are "fed back" into the environment. In this manner numerous generations of musical permutations of will be created.
The environment could be seeded with a specific music style or characteristic; this element could be tracked to explore evolution of the given style. Perhaps distinct and original musical styles will evolve through collaborative musical creation.
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