Rémi FOX, musician in our artistic residency at Ircam, Représentations Musicales team, and Jérôme NIKA, researcher, Représentations Musicales team, will present: "Hi. A. – Hippocame Artificiel"
(seminar in the Stravinsky room, but you can follow it on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/CkBaZ5t9Nzk)
You can watch it through the IRCAM's MEDIA site: https://medias.ircam.fr/xf8835a_hi-a-hippocampe-artificiel
"Hi. A. – Hippocame Artificiel" explores the meta-composition of pieces defined by musical memories and generative processes. This project aims at implementing generative agents implemented from the DYCI2 library to realize interactive and creative paths of "musical memories", in the same way that the hippocampus (of the brain) is put to work during dreams to orchestrate the creative reinterpretation of the memory. Live electronics from these agents are thus fed and generated by the instrumental stimuli, activating intelligent listening processes and meta-composed reaction mechanisms, blurring the established roles of composer and performer.
The hippocampus is an element of the brain responsible for the high-level coordination of memory-related processes. Involved both upstream and downstream, it is an actor in the acquisition of memory as well as in its exploitation: it pilots the discovery of novelties in perceptions, the encoding of this information, its storage, and at the other end of the chain, the mobilization of this data. Indeed, it is also the hippocampus that allows us to "replay scenes" by reactivating certain activity patterns in different brain regions. The "artificial hippocampus" will thus make it possible to introduce a process of composition of musical memories and writing of behaviors activated during the performance.
The seminar will address the elaboration of a taxonomy of musical memories, recorded by different musicians, in order to feed generative agents. Rémi Fox and Jérôme Nika will retrace their musical research work aimed at composing the behavior of reactive agents, which will be illustrated by live demonstrations and excerpts from the duo's album "C'est pour ça" (Fox/Nika).