Backgammon: process-based musical explorations using the agent designer

Abstract

The Agent Designer is software for designing virtual musical software agents that are capable of remotely controlling a musical composition, making decisions that are derived from previous human performances and additional creative input in the structuring of this example data. This composition, Backgammon, is a collaboration between the Agent Designer's creator Aengus Martin and musician Ollie Bown. In this performance, musical agents created with the Agent Designer control part of a dynamic composition in such a way that an improvising partner (Ollie Bown on live electronics) has partial control over what the system can do. In this way the boundary between the active and passive possibilities of software objects becomes the subject of a compositional process. The title refers to the game-like dynamics that arise, involving chance, choices and the ability to dramatically interrupt the other's course of action.