The winner of this year’s Henry Armero Award is Sara Adkins whose work combines two of Henry’s interests, computer science and music. Sara graduated from CMU in 2018 with a BCSA in Computer Science and Music Technology with a minor in Sound Design.Who best to describe her award winning project than Sara herself:
“The title of my project was “Creating with the Machine: Interactive Algorithmic Composition for Live Performance.” The project consisted of 3 pieces that combined algorithmic and traditional methods of music composition into live performances to explore how interactive generative algorithms can influence creativity in musical improvisation and create a compelling listening experience for the audience. I became interested in this topic because through my study of music of computer science at CMU, I noticed a disconnect between the researchers that develop new algorithms for computer generated music and performing musicians. With recent advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the idea of using computer science to generate art and music has become popular. However, the results are usually evaluated on their ability to imitate existing art rather than on their own artistic value. As a performing musician myself, I wanted to explore how these music generation algorithms could be altered to interact with human musicians in a live concert.”
Congratulations to Sara, we wish her all the best in her future endeavors.
More about the Henry Armero Award is here and here.