1st Edition
Musicians Coding AI for Themselves
1. Prelude Personal and Peculiar
Julie Zhu and Constantin Basica
2. Movement I Machine Learning at the Artist Scale
Molly Jones
3. Interlude I Interview with Laetitia Sonami
Constantin Basica and Julie Zhu
4. Movement II Notochord: Designing and Experiencing a Low Latency MIDI Language Model
Victor Shepardson
5. Interlude II Interview with George Lewis
Constantin Basica and Julie Zhu
6. Movement III Machine Grain of Musical AI Voices: Coding Extra Normal Values in Live Performance with AI Models
Kelsey Cotton
7. Interlude III Interview with Jennifer Walshe
Constantin Basica and Julie Zhu
8. Movement IV The Last Piece: Training AI on a Composer’s Brainwaves
Constantin Basica, Prateek Verma, and Alexandru I. Berceanu
9. Interlude IV Interview with Nao Tokui
Julie Zhu and Constantin Basica
10. Intermission Ethics, Authorship, and Creativity in the Age of ChatGPT
Charles Hiroshi Garrett
11. Interlude V Interview with Ge Wang
Julie Zhu and Constantin Basica
12. Movement V Deep Drawing
Julie Zhu and John Granzow
13. Interlude VI Interview with Pierre Alexandre Tremblay
Julie Zhu and Constantin Basica
14. Movement VI The Neural Tape Loop
Hugo Flores García
15. Interlude VII Interview with Holly Herndon
Constantin Basica and Julie Zhu
16. Movement VII Pandora’s Dream: Building a Software Framework for AI-Mediated Live Music Practice
Celeste Betancur Gutiérrez
17. Interlude VIII Interview with CJ Carr
Julie Zhu
18. Movement VIII The Sweet Spot: Human–AI Alignment with Randomness, Complexity, and Machine Learning
Ted Moore
19. Postlude Shifts in Creative Practice with Intelligent Machines
Doga Cavdir
20. Encore A Collection of Claims on AI Arts Practice
Alexander Schubert
Biography
Constantin Basica, DMA, is a Romanian composer whose work focuses on symbiotic interrelations between music, video, and performers. His music has been presented internationally by distinguished artists at events such as MATA Festival, Ars Electronica Festival (Bucharest Garden), World New Music Days, George Enescu Festival, and the International Computer Music Conference. He earned his doctorate in composition and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University. In recent years, he has collaborated with researchers on developing AI tools for co-creativity that explore “translations” between media. Basica is a lecturer in music at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
Julie Zhu, DMA, is a composer, artist, and carillonist. Her work stands interstitial to instrumental music, electronics, and performance within settings ranging from chamber music stagings to museum sound installations to experimental film scores. Concision and poetry characterize her music, with commissions from Radio France, Dark Music Days Reykjavík, GMEM Marseille, GRAME Lyon, and Chamber Music America. Her research on music and AI focuses on the project Deep Drawing, which tests a machine’s ability to bring the intricate noises of drawing and writing to visual life. Zhu is an assistant professor of performing arts technology at the University of Michigan.
