Sound cells in genetic improvisation: An evolutionary model for improvised music

Abstract

Musical improvisation and biological evolution are similarly based on the principles of unpredictability and adaptivity. Within this framework, this research project examines whether and how structures of evolutionary developmental logic can be detected and described in free improvisation. The underlying concept of improvisation is participative in nature and, in this light, contains similar generative strategies as there are in evolutionary processes. Further implications of the theory of evolution for cultural development in the concept of memetics and the form of genetic algorithms build an interdisciplinary network of different theories and methodologies, from which the proposed model of genetic improvisation emerges.