Intelligent Instruments

Intelligent Instruments is a 5-year ERC funded project led by Professor Thor Magnusson (URL: https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p164902-thor-magnusson). The project investigates the role of artificial intelligence in new musical instruments. Music is the research base, but the reach and impact is wider and ultimately the project studies how musical interfaces can be applied as scientific instruments, for example through sonification.

The Intelligent Instruments programme studies creative AI from a broad humanities basis, involving musicians, computer scientists, philosophers and cognitive scientists in key international institutions. We explore the emerging language and discourse of creative AI, addressing how notions such as agency, autonomy, authenticity, authorship, creativity and originality change with these new technologies. The technical approach is to implement new machine learning in embodied musical instruments. We invent instruments that interact, learn and evolve in the hands of the performer. Our theoretical approach is to collaborate with researchers, artists and the public across in key studies of how creative AI alter our relationship with technology, social interaction and knowledge production.

 

The Intelligent Instrument Lab (URL: www.iil.is) is located at the Iceland University of the Arts but with a close collaboration with the Experimental Music Technologies Lab (URL: www.emutelab.org) at Sussex. In our lab we work on designing, building and testing new instruments in collaboration with other researchers, music students and local artists. We have access to the advanced workshops and labs as well as the artistic infrastructure of the university. We seek to maintain a strong public engagement, for example through our Friday Open Labs, symposia and musical events.