ABSTRACT
Creating music is a social activity. Without someone to create it, perform it, and perceive it, music can hardly be said to exist. If we want to build artificial systems that can help us to create music – or, even more, that can attempt to create music on their own – we should strive to include the social element in those systems. The artificial intelligence approach to musical creativity has often been a solitary affair, constructing lone monolithic systems that come up with music by themselves (Loy, 1989). Instead, can we build a more socially motivated group of interacting artificial agents, who then create music within their social context? The answer is yes – but to do so, we need to move away from the standard conception of artificial intelligence, and enter the new world of artificial life.
