Frankensteinian Methods for Evolutionary Music Composition by Peter Todd and Gregory Werner

This book chapter, “Frankensteinian Methods for Evolutionary Music Composition,” by Peter Todd and Gregory Werner looks at co-evolutionary techniques in music composition. The pair aimed to create intelligent algorithmic music composition systems, inspired by the story of Frankenstein. The duo explains in their own words:

”[Our] approach involves separate populations of critic agents and composer agents, striving to establish a consistent aesthetic within a simulated culture. However, while their method yielded a coherent aesthetic, it often diverged from human sensibilities.”

In other words, they created a novel, cybernetic-feedback loop method for refining musical compositions that combined rules, learning and evolution, published in Musical Networks (MIT Press, 1999).