Generating Structure – Towards Large-Scale Formal Generation

Metacreative systems have been very successful at generating event-to-event musical details and generating short forms. However, large-scale formal decisions have tended to remain in the hands of a human, either through an operator guiding an improvisational system along in performance, or the assemblage of shorter generated sections into longer forms. This paper will describe the open problem of large-scale generative form, and the author’s attempts at delegating such decisions to a metacreative system by describing several of his generative systems and their approach to structure. The author will describe in greater detail his latest system — The Indifference Engine — and how it negotiates between agent intentions and performance information derived from a live performer.