Integrating Composer/Improviser’s Actions in the creation of an interac‐ tive and provocative composition system. Roger Alsop Department of Performing Arts (Production). VCAMCM, University of Melbourne, Australia ralsop [at] unimelb.edu.au http://vca‐mcm.unimelb.edu.au Proceedings of Korean Electro‐Acoustic Music Society's 2015 Annual Conference (KEAMSAC2015) Seoul, Korea, 2‐3 October 2015 This paper discusses computer aided and automated composition/analysis, and related aesthetic understanding. It discusses the program ICIA, prototyped with the Max environment, that integrates: sound analysis systems; sound effecting and manipulation systems; algorithmic composition processes; and gesture recognition systems. ICIA segments sounds selected by the composer/improviser into usable parts and groupings via a user and machine defined stochastic processes. The groupings are represented on a display for manipulation through a variety of compositional processes by the composer/improviser in real time. The sounds that the composer/improviser may use include: the sounds of the environment; sounds previously stored; sounds being generated by ICIA; or any other kind of audible input the composer/improviser chooses. It provides a provocative environment for the composer/improviser by interpreting their physical, sonic, intentional and non‐intentional actions and decisions through a set of algorithms that the composer/improviser has varying control over. These algorithms have built into them a ‘degree of predictability’ scale that the composer or machine may set. Terms such as ‘more’ or ‘less’, ‘inside’ or ‘outside’, ‘regular or ‘irregular’ are also used in relation to aspects of the compositional/improvisational process. Using such ‘non‐musical’ terms causes the composer/improviser to consider their approach outside of traditional composition systems. Therefore the composer/improviser is provoked to take into account all aspects of their interaction with ICIA in the creation of a sound art/musical artwork, exposing their conscious and unconscious, intentional and non‐intentional, aesthetic approaches in the process of creation. Curtis Roads, who has been active in computer music for over 35 years, wrote “As I listen and compose, I inevita‐ bly formulate new techniques and aesthetic concepts” (2015, xiv) The development of computer based algo‐ rithmic composition and improvisation has a compara‐ tively short but dense history, ranging through: processes (Edwards 2011, Alpern 1995, Nierhaus 2009, Fernández and Vico 2013, Simoni and Dannenberg 2013, Ma‐ zurowski 2015), considerations (Manzolli et al. 1999, Har‐ ley 1995, Edwards 2011, Alsop 1999, Supper 2001, Jacob 1996, Williams et al. 2014, Chagas 2014, Roads 2015), and histories (Ariza 2005, Doornbusch 2002, Ariza 2011), and this list is at best an indicative tip of the iceberg. Any artist of any modality could make Roads’s quote; it is a function of creativity. Often the new techniques and aesthetic concepts are formulated and expressed within well‐delineated aesthetics, and these are for the most part, based in pre‐existing techniques and aesthetic con‐ cepts. An example of this can be seen in Picasso’s development of figurative painting, where the images in the ‘Blue pe‐ riod’, through the Rose and African periods, to Cubism in which contemporary Georges Braque was also a seminal motivator. In music the same can be seen in the C20 de‐ velopment of ‘serial’ music. From the tonal manipula‐ tions of Wagner Schoenberg ‘emancipated the disso‐ nance’, taught composition to Webern, Berg, Harrison, and Cage and others, who then developed his approach‐ es in a variety of ways, to form systematic/algorithmic approaches to musical composition in the C20 that are expressive and idiosyncratic to each composer. Here the development of new artworks came about in pictorial art and sonic art through well‐ordained systems: the tempered pitch system of western music and the representative approach of painting. In both cases the functional aspects of each art form were explored and interrogated, resulting in new processes and nuanced outcomes offering new interpretation of the traditions with the art forms. Overview of ICIA Integrating Composer Improviser Actions (ICIA) is de‐ signed to provoke this situation by taking the initial ideas of the composer – potentially expressed as: motif or ges‐ ture deliberately constructed or chosen for development, a structure to be populated and explored, a recorded improvisation (be that in memory, notation, or as a sonic object), a sonic representation of a non musical event or object, and so on; and all of these approaches may over‐ lap and intertwine. It is made up of a number of simple algorithmic process‐ es that when concatenated create a vast variety of possi‐ ble outcomes.