On 10 December 1831, Charles Darwin set sail from Plymouth on the Beagle bound for South America on a journey that was to fine tune his theories of evolution. Darwin's observations of the stage of fossilisation, and of finches and flora eventually were to be fine tuned and appeared in The Origin of Species published in 1859. Darwin's theory was based on natural selection.

The Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2009 had as its theme Music and Evolution - 200 years of Darwin. At the heart of the Festival lay the internationally acclaimed research and musical concepts inspired by neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, showcasing computer music research and new creative developments at the University of Plymouth.

Musicians have always been acutely aware of the scientific developments of their time. From the discovery of the direct relationship between the pitch of a note and the length of a string or pipe, to the latest computer models of human musical cognition and intelligence, musicians have always looked to science to provide new and challenging paradigms to study and compose music. A new approach to music inspired by neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has recently emerged at the crossroads of Computing, Biology, and Natural History: Evolutionary Computer Music. Software inspired by neo-Darwinian evolution provides innovative and natural means for generating musical ideas from a specifiable set of primitive components and processes reflecting the compositional process of generating a variety of ideas by brainstorming, followed by selecting the most promising ones for further iterated refinement. Such technology allows musicians to build computational models of cultural transmission and change of a population's body of musical ideas over time. Musical evolution can be influenced by a variety of constraints and tendencies built into the model, such as factors that influence the way that music is experienced, learned, stored, modified, and passed on between individuals.

John Cage published his book Notations in 1969. It contains a collection of scores and manuscripts from contemporary composers of the time. In Cage’s own words. The collection was determined by circumstances rather than any process of selection. Cage is generally known for his ideas on using indeterminism in musical composition. His lectures and writings on this topic were very inspirational in the early stages of computer music, most probably because it is rather straightforward to write computer programs to generate music using indeterminism. However, a deeper interpretation of Cage’s work reveals a profound philosophical take on the potential of computers for music, which is to do with the complexity that emerges from the interactions of much simpler processes in nature. This notion is one of the pillars of Evolutionary Computer Music, where musicians are more concerned with understanding and creating the right circumstances for something to happen rather than determining its exact steps beforehand.

For five centuries Plymouth has been the city most associated with world exploration. The University of Plymouth is rapidly emerging as an international port for contemporary music research and performance. Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2009 celebrated Charles Darwin, the explorer and scientist and a new kind of evolution through music.

Festival Directors

Simon Ible Director, Peninsula Arts

Eduardo Miranda Professor of Computer Music

 

 

CD: Tiergarten

An 8 channel electroacoustic piece inspired by Tiergarten park in Berlin. Composed in the winter of 2006/07 at the Elektronisches Studio of the Technical University of Berlin, with funds from DAAD, this piece is a subjective and surreal auditory journey through the park. Disguised references are made to both Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky in allusions to the impressive building of the Berlin Philharmonic situated at the Potsdam end of the park; mysterious noises combine cries of imaginary animals and insect calls.

Tiergarten was premiered at the central Crosspoint atrium of the Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth, in a concert by BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) during Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2008.

 

NOTATIONS Volume 1: Music and Evolution

£10 inc p&p within the UK