Worldwide AI

Neuromorphic, evolutionary, or fuzzylike systems have been developed by many research groups in the Spanish computer sciences. It is no surprise, then, that these naturegrounded efforts start to emerge, enriching the AI catalogue of research projects and publications and, eventually, leading to new directions of basic or applied research. In this article, we review the contribution of Melomics in computational creativity. In Spain there are 74 universities, many of which have computer science departments that host AIrelated research groups. AEPIA, the Spanish society for AI research, was founded in 1983 and has been vigorously promoting the advancement of AI since then. Along with several other societies and communities of interest, it promotes various periodic conferences and workshops. The Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA) of the Spanish National Research Council constitutes one of the flagships of local AI research. Ramón López de Mántaras, IIIA's renowned director, was one of the pioneers of AI in Spain, and he also was the recipient of the prestigious AAAI Englemore Award in 2011. Other researchers that have reached an outstanding position, and lead important research groups in Spain, include Antonio Bahamonde (University of Oviedo), Federico Barber (Polytechnic University of Madrid), Vicent Botti (Polytechnic University of Valencia), and Amparo Vila (University of Granada). This department, with more than one hundred faculty members, is organized in several research groups, three of which maintain active AI research lines. Melomics is a new approach in artificial creativity (for a perspective on this discipline, see the 2009 fall issue of AI Magazine). More specifically, it focuses on algorithmic composition and aims at the full automation of the composition process of professional music.