Metacreation Lab Newsletter | Winter 2021

The Metacreation Lab wishes you a creative new year! Here are some things we are looking forward to in 2021:

Musical Metacreation Tutorial at IIJCAI - PRICAI 2020

18.-22. July 2021, online

As part of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI – PRICAI 2020, January 7-15), Philippe Pasquier will lead a tutorial on Musical Metacreation. This tutorial aims at introducing the field of musical metacreation and its current developments, promises, and challenges.


The tutorial will be held this Friday, January 8th, from 9 am to 12:20 pm JST (12 am to 3:20 am UTC) and a full description of the syllabus can be found here. For details about registration for the conference and tutorials, click below.

The conference will be held at a virtual venue created by Virtual Chair on the gather.town platform, which offers the spontaneity of mingling with colleagues from all over the world while in the comfort of your home. The platform will allow attendees to customize avatars to fit their mood, enjoy a virtual traditional Japanese village, take part in plenary talks and more.


2nd Conference on AI Music Creativity (MuMe + CSMC)

18.-22. July 2021, online

The second Conference on AI Music Creativity brings together two overlapping research forums: The Computer Simulation of Music Creativity Conference (est. 2016) and The International Workshop on Musical Metacreation (est. 2012). The objective of the conference is to bring together scholars and artists interested in the emulation and extension of musical creativity through computational means and to provide them with an interdisciplinary platform in which to present and discuss their work in scientific and artistic contexts.

The 2021 Conference on AI Music Creativity will be hosted by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts of Graz, Austria and held online. The five-day program will feature paper presentations, concerts, panel discussions, workshops, tutorials, sound installations and two keynotes. 


September 10, 2021, online

The 3rd IEEE Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Art Creation (AIART) workshop has been announced for 2021. to bring forward cutting-edge technologies and most recent advances in the area of AI art in terms of enabling creation, analysis and understanding technologies. The theme topic of the workshop will be AI creativity, and will be accompanied by a Special Issue of the renowned SCI journal. 

AIART is inviting high-quality papers presenting or addressing issues related to AI art, in a wide range of topics. The submission due date is January 31, 2021, and you can learn about the wide range of topics accepted below: 

AIART  2021

Looking back at AIART2020, we have now archived Philippe Pasquier’s keynote speech from last year’s workshop. The recorded keynote is now available to view here:

AIART 2020 Keynote: The rise of Creative AI: Computational Creativity and Generative Art at the Metacreation Lab


MMM : Multi-Track Music Machine

One of the latest projects at the Metacreation Lab is MMM: a generative music generation system based on Transformer architecture, capable of generating multi-track music, developed by Jeff Enns and Philippe Pasquier.

Based on an auto-regressive model, the system is capable of generating music from scratch using a wide range of preset instruments. Inputs from one or several tracks can condition the generation of new tracks, resampling MIDI input from the user or adding further layers of music.

To learn more about the system and see it in action, click below and watch the demonstration video, hear some examples, or try the program yourself through Google Colab.


ISEA2020 Recap // Why Sentience? 

As we look back at one of the most unprecedented years, some of the questions explored at ISEA2020 are more salient now than ever. This recap video highlights some of the most memorable moments from last year’s virtual symposium. 

ISEA2020 // Why Sentience? Recap Video

The Metacreation Lab's researchers explored some of these guiding questions at ISEA2020 with two papers presented at the symposium: Chatterbox: an interactive system of gibberish agents and Liminal Scape, An Interactive Visual Installation with Expressive AI. These papers, and the full proceedings from ISEA2020 can now be accessed below.