Meandering River

The musical score was developed in collaboration with kling klang klong guided by the intention to enhance the emotional, complex and unpredictable nature of the visual aesthetic. Through a research of various computational strategies, the musical composition was created using the Google Magenta Performance RNN learning model and a custom-built procedural system. To collect training datasets, piano players were invited to improvise musical phrases based on the diverse visual sceneries of the animation. The range of auditive interpretations they produced served as a large-scale polyphonic inventory for the Artificial Intelligence to learn from. To reflect the performative nature of the work, values outputted directly from the river simulation such as the length, curvature and events of connections of the meandering river were analyzed and interpreted in real-time to influence musical parameters like tempo, note strength, intensity, pitch range.