Transcognition

To José Luis de Delás “In memoriam”

This work was premiered in July 2019 at the ACMC 2019 Conference in Melbourne, in the Make it up Club. In October 2020 it was programmed at the ISMIR 2020 conference in Montreal and the OUA Electroacoustic Music Festival 2020 in Osaka and on September 2022 a new version was instantiated in the atemporánea Festival in Buenos Aires. on June 2021 a special version for two improvised accordions was instantiated for the EVO 2021 in New York. There are 4 instances of the work.

This is a real-time composed work that has a different realization each time that the Max/Msp patch is launched. It is an open-form work algorithmically created.

This is the version Instantiated for the ISMIR 2020 conference in Montreal.

The title of this work is a concept created by Graeme L Sullivan [1],[2],[3],[6]. This concept was created as a model of artistic thinking. It describes artistic cognition as something that is very dynamic and changes very often, in which the meanings change in this very process recursively. “Transcognition is what happens when a creative process that is closely related to a changing environment changes itself in the same creative process”.

This piece is created by 32 Multimodal Multiple Cognitive Agents [4] that can create music in competitive or collaborative modes (that´s the way the work is called transcognition, at the same time, the environment changes in a constantly evolving relation). The work begins with all the agents in a competitive mode. Each Agent creates its own music trying to generate the most interesting music to get the audience focused on its activity. Periodically, they check if what they do is really the most significant, if they decide that not, then, they become collaborative (they have the intelligence to measure it, based on the Information Theory [5]). Slowly, all the agents become collaborative. Two minutes after the last agent becomes collaborative, the work finishes automatically. Once they become collaborative they cannot return to competitive mode.

Special version of transcognition performed at the EVO 2021  for two improvised accordions and electronics in which Manca Dornik improvised as she were and human agent collaborating with the other cognitive agents.

This is the version instantiated for the premier of the work in Melbourne.

The generated score is converted into the environment through which the Agents relate to each other. The role of the score itself is completely transformed in this work, instead of being something closed that all agents must follow, the score is also the source of information that the agents use to create their own music. This transcognitive process makes the score also a negotiation space between all the Cognitive Agents. Each Agent Produces a single voice from a traditional perspective, creating a 32 voices polyphony.

The main window of the patch. On the left, you can see the Agents – Subpatches.

When they are in the collaborative mode, they try to predict what music will do the rest of the agents based on the database of the past events of the score. So they imitate the real outcome of the work (they play the notes that have happened with more probability).

This is the version instantiated for the Osaka version.

Screen capture during the performance.

Instead of a classical form, we have an open process form In which the sounding material changes according to the mode of the agents. The work is constantly changing unpredictably because the database (the score) changes when the agents become collaborative.