Embodied Generative Music

Embodied generative music (EGM) is a compositional approach developed in the context of an artistic and scholarly research project carrying the same name. ¹ The project had two complementary objectives. On the one hand, it aimed at furthering the understanding of the relationship between musical and bodily expression. Music philosopher Deniz Peters investigated this aspect from an aesthetic perspective as documented, amongst other publications, in his contribution to this volume. On the other hand, the project developed and explored a new kind of intermedial artistic expression, an embodied form of generative music. This is the project’s poïetic perspective as developed by the author in cooperation with the composer and researcher David Pirrò. The present chapter concentrates on the latter poïetic perspective, which—on a more general level—concerns itself with expanding the artistic possibilities of electronic music composition (using the term ‘composition’ in a widened sense, to include collaborative means of composition and coauthorship, and to regard an algorithm as an alternative to—and not a precursor of—a score).