Genetic Laptop Music

by Kim Cascone

The purpose of this workshop is to stimulate new ways of working collaboratively and in performance with open source materials. Kim Cascone's approach is based on a simple genetic algorithmic which is 'executed' by the participants.

The concept for this workshop was inspired by John Maeda's "Human Powered Computer Experiment". In this experiment Maeda recreated the internal operations of a simple computer using people to physically transport handwritten instructions and data to and from the CPU, RAM, FPU, etc.
Participating in this type of experiment enables one to transfer abstract concepts from their body to their brain. In a similar spirit, this workshop develops a group workflow using the model of a Simple Genetic Algorithm (SGA) with the result being an emergent work of music/sound art.
The idea of using a SGA as a conceptual framework evolved out of Cascone's research in information flow used as a catalyst to construct emergent content. Also, while doing research for a project that utilized genetic algorithms Cascone saw that many of the ideas embodied in the SGA could also be used to construct a framework for his open source content creation workshop.