ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the connections between George Lewis’s computer music composition Voyager (1987–) and the practices of the AACM. In Voyager, a human musician improvises alongside a computer running Lewis’s software, which spontaneously generates orchestral textures that sound as if they were created by an ensemble of AACM multi-instrumentalists. The human and computer are equal partners in this endeavor: both players must analyze the sonic environment and create their own musical material independently of the other, much like an open improvisation by an AACM group, where the musicians work together to determine how the performance will unfold.
