Four of my new "metacompositions" for interactive audio installation Mimi4x will be presented this year's International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference. Metacompositions can be described as sets of musical material that are used for the basis of improvisation by Mimi4x. The user's input also affects the outcomes of these improvisations, allowing them to engage in a kind of "metaimprovisation."

Mimi4x is based on Mimi (Multimodal Interaction for Musical Improvisation), an interactive musical improvisation system that explores the impact of visual feedback in performer-machine interaction. Designed by Alexandre François, Mimi makes use of a data structure called the factor oracle to recombine musical material supplied by a composer/performer. This version of Mimi4x links the output of four oracles to one another. For example, the pitch of one oracle might affect the filter of another oracle, and the pitch of that oracle might affect the reverb of a third oracle. We discovered that the variation afforded by these interactions renews the variety and interest of the musical material, even with small amounts of material. Furthermore, the user experience with the installation takes on a puzzle-like quality, with the activation of different oracles producing diverse and often surprising results. I created four metacompositions for this version of Mimi4x, each with a different set of links between oracles.

12th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, October 24-28
Address: 4833 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, Florida 33140, USA.