Ambient Intelligence in Electroacoustic Music: Towards a Future of Self-Organising Music

In this article, we discuss the current role of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) in electroacoustic music and reflect on its future. AmI refers to the user-centric approach of seamless ‘intelligent’ environments designed to continuously adapt to the user’s needs and intentions. We have previously discussed a contemporary emergent trend in electroacoustic music identified as ‘self-organising music’. This trend is directly related to the technological concepts of AmI: i.e., it includes works able to ‘sense’ their environment and change their functional structure – self-organise sonically – in response to this environment through decentralised ‘intelligent’ control processes.

This article continues beyond our original discussion by envisioning an emerging musical tendency, determined by music interfaces using AmI. This consequently poses radically novel technical and aesthetic questions; new principles for creating music as well as for experiencing it - and as a result perceiving/describing/studying it. In other terms, the consideration of the perceptual ‘paradigm shift’, reflected by implications of AmI. We therefore suggest that it is important to think, not only in terms of technological progress but also in terms of a mental evolution.