Abstract
A Human-Swarm Interactive Music System (IMS) is an improvisational system that allows users to interact with a swarm of self-organized artificial agents exhibiting emergence in a sound and music context. If we want a temporal synchronization of these agents (e.g. as if they were following the same metronome) without relying on a centralized mechanism, we need ways to achieve decentralization through local interactions of these individuals; that is, "self-synchronization" strategies to keep; for instance, the same tempo in a musical performance. One way is modelling this self-organized property as a network of "coupled oscillators". In this presentation, I describe a work in progress that studies the behaviour of "Pulse-Couple Oscillators" for their potential use in Human Swarm IMSs, particularly in physical systems where delays could affect their performance. Since a user is involved in these IMSs, I stated at the end of the presentation questions related to psychology and neuroscience whose answers might guide the IMS design.
Bio
Pedro Lucas is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion (RITMO) and the Department of Informatics (IFI) at the University of Oslo (UiO). He has a background in computer science with a focus on music technology. Throughout his professional career, Pedro has developed real-time systems related to game development and music, which has helped him to gain experience in using game engines and sound synthesis programming languages to implement integrated music systems. His research is focused on Human-Swarm Interactive Music System (IMS), which enables a musician to perform with self-organized and self-synchronized autonomous musical agents in virtual and/or physical setups.