Al Biles

Rochester Institute of Technology, Interactive Games and Media, Emeritus

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After a great 39-year ride at RIT, I've become emeritus (retired). Now I can play lots more music and try to find enough hours in the day to pursue all the things I've been putting off!

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Books by Al Biles

Evolutionary Computer Music

"The evolutionary computation approach to music is an exciting new development for composers and ... more "The evolutionary computation approach to music is an exciting new development for composers and musicologists alike. For composers, it provides an innovative and natural means for generating musical ideas from a specifiable set of primitive components and processes. For musicologists, these techniques are used to model the cultural transmission and change of a population's body of musical ideas over time. In both cases, musical evolution can be guided by a variety of constraints and tendencies built into the system, such as realistic psychological factors that influence the way music is expressed, experienced, learned, stored, modified, and passed on among individuals.

This book discusses not only the applications of evolutionary computation to music, but also the tools needed to create and study such systems. These tools are drawn in part from research into the origins and evolution of biological organisms, ecologies, and cultural systems on the one hand, and from computer simulation methodologies on the other. They can be combined to create surrogate artificial worlds populated by interacting simulated organisms in which complex musical experiments can be performed that would otherwise be impossible.

This authoritative book, with contributions from experts from around the globe, demonstrates that evolutionary systems can be used to create and to study musical compositions and cultures in ways that have never before been achieved."

Papers by Al Biles

Northeast Artificial Intelligence Consortium Annual Report for 1986. Volume 1. Executive Summary

by Jim Brule and Al Biles

: The Northeast Artificial Intelligence Consortium's (NAIC) purpose is to conduct pertinent r... more : The Northeast Artificial Intelligence Consortium's (NAIC) purpose is to conduct pertinent research in artificial intelligence and to perform activities ancillary to this research. This report describes progress that has been made in the second year of existence. The topics covered in general are: versatile expert system for equipment maintenance, distributed AI for communications system control, automatic photo interpretation, time-oriented problem solving, speech understanding systems, knowledge base maintenance, hardware architectures for very large systems, knowledge-based reasoning and planning, and a knowledge acquisition, assistance and explanation systems. Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Expert systems, Problem solving, Speech understanding, Machine vision, Knowledge based systems, Planning knowledge acquisition, Logic programming. (jhd)

GenJam's Got Talent?

The author has been developing and performing with GenJam, the Genetic Jammer, for over 20 years.... more The author has been developing and performing with GenJam, the Genetic Jammer, for over 20 years. GenJam applies Genetic Algorithms to improvise straight-up jazz in real time by breeding its own ideas with licks it hears the presenter play on trumpet. In October, 2015, a casting associate at America&#39;s Got Talent invited the presenter to audition for the upcoming season. After scoring a front-of-line pass, the presenter drove to Detroit in November and joined 1400 other acts for a 90-second &quot;pre-audition&quot;. This presentation will describes that bizarre experience and reveals the inevitable outcome.

The role of programming in IT

Proceedings of the 6th conference on Information technology education - SIGITE '05, 2005

Early in its history as an academic discipline, depth in computer programming was a primary disti... more Early in its history as an academic discipline, depth in computer programming was a primary distinguishing factor between IT and older computing disciplines, such as computer science. Initially, IT was perceived, or misperceived, as being "computing without the programming." However, as IT has begun to mature as a computing discipline, computer programming is emerging as "the" foundation skill for information technologists. However, programming in IT is fundamentally different from programming in computer science or software engineering, and the tasks and requisite skill sets of IT professionals differ from those of other computing professionals. The IT Department at RIT has changed the weight and delivery of programming in its curriculum several times since its inception in 1992. Today, programming is an essential foundation for other more advanced IT skills in all curricular knowledge areas, and it is a central outcome of the curriculum. This paper discusses the role of programming in IT, the types of skills necessary, how we see the need for this skill changing in the other "pillars" of this academic discipline, and the impact on programming curricula.

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Evolutionary Computer Music

... com Page 5. Foreword From Gloriﬁed Adding Machines to Evolutionary Computer Music I was very ... more

GenJam in Perspective: A Tentative Taxonomy for GA Music and Art Systems

Leonardo, 2003

GenJam is an interactive genetic algorithm (GA) that models a human jazz improviser and performs ... more GenJam is an interactive genetic algorithm (GA) that models a human jazz improviser and performs regularly as the author's sideman on jazz gigs. GenJam learns to improvise full-chorus solos under the guidance of a human mentor and “trades fours” in real time with a human performer in “chase” choruses. In this article, the author first briefly describes GenJam's architecture, representations, genetic operators and performance characteristics. He then places GenJam in the context of a proposed taxonomy for GA-based music and art systems.

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GenJam: An interactive genetic algorithm jazz improviser

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1997

Jazz improvisation is an art form requiring spontaneous creativity and subtle communication. When... more Jazz improvisation is an art form requiring spontaneous creativity and subtle communication. When improvising, a jazz soloist uses a personal store of melodic ideas, adapts the ideas to meet rhythmic and harmonic constraints imposed by the rhythm section, and concurrently constructs and performs an improvised solo. Jazz soloists communicate with each other by "trading fours" or "eights," where soloists take turns improvising over a four or eight measure portion of the tune. In these "chase" choruses, one soloist often quotes or develops material played by another soloist, leading to highly interactive, musical conversations.

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Training Neural Networks Using a Genetic Algorithm and an Iterated Pseudo-Inverse

We present a rapid training algorithm for two-layer, feed-forward neural networks. The rst layer ... more We present a rapid training algorithm for two-layer, feed-forward neural networks. The rst layer of weights is determined by a genetic algorithm, the second layer by an iterated pseudo-inverse. We apply our method to problems such as parity and encoder-decoder (the latter is of the form \N{M{N," with M < N, in which the input and output of the net are identical). The network's form is: y = 1 Vx followed by z = 2 Wy, where x, y, and z are the input, hidden, and output vectors; V and W are the weights matrices; 1 is a piecewise linear function, and 2 is sign. A genetic algorithm evolves V using a tness function based on the network's performance after W has been determined by an iterated pseudoinverse.

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Life with GenJam: interacting with a musical IGA

IEEE SMC'99 Conference Proceedings. 1999 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Cat. No.99CH37028), 1999

GenJam, short for Genetic Jammer, is an interactive genetic algorithm (IGA) that models a jazz im... more GenJam, short for Genetic Jammer, is an interactive genetic algorithm (IGA) that models a jazz improviser and performs as a featured soloist in the author’s Virtual Quintet. GenJam evolves populations of melodic ideas under the guidance of a human mentor, whose feedback provides the environment under which individual ideas either survive to breed or die off. GenJam also uses its genetic algorithm machinery as a real-time melodic development paradigm to evolve phrases played by a human into its improvised responses in chase choruses. This paper provides an overview of the GenJam architecture and focuses on interface issues for three classes of users: mentors who train GenJam individually, audiences who train GenJam collectively, and performers who interact with GenJam in real-time performance situations.

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Straight-Ahead Jazz with GenJam: A Quick Demonstration

The author’s GenJam project has spanned nearly 20 years of development and performance. This demo... more The author’s GenJam project has spanned nearly 20 years of development and performance. This demonstration provides a brief overview of GenJam’s current configuration illustrated with a visually annotated performance of a tune. After a brief explanation of GenJam’s real-time interactive capabilities, we’ll play more tunes, as time permits.

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Performing with Technology: Lessons Learned from the GenJam Project

The author has been performing with GenJam, the Genetic Jammer, for nearly 20 years and has accum... more The author has been performing with GenJam, the Genetic Jammer, for nearly 20 years and has accumulated a wealth of experiences in performing live jazz with technology. This paper presents a discussion of the use of technology in jazz, both from the performer’s and from the audience’s perspective, and it proposes a classification scheme for live performance that is geared to mainstream performing situations.

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It's MAGIC!

New Media Consortium Summer Conference, Jun 19, 2014

The RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity is a project-driven, experienti... more The RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity is a project-driven, experiential center with the ambitious goals of breaking down silos and transforming a campus. The Center houses the MAGIC Research Lab, which facilitates and coordinates multi- and cross-disciplinary research projects that span the entire university, and the MAGIC Spell Studios, which initiates and manages commercial media production as a 3rd-party publisher for students and faculty. This session describes the creation of the center, and will facilitate a discussion of how others can gain insight from our experiences.

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Evolutionary Music

Evolutionary Music Tutorial, Genetic and Evolutionary …, 2005

... 11 Papadopoulos and Wiggins (98) ... C Eb F Gb G Bb Blues C7Bl CDEFGAB Major Cmaj7sus CDEFGA ... more

Neural network fitness functions for a musical IGA

This paper describes recent enhancements to GenJam, a genetic algorithm-based model of a novice j... more This paper describes recent enhancements to GenJam, a genetic algorithm-based model of a novice jazz musician learning to improvise. After presenting an overview and update of the current interactive version of GenJam, we focus on efforts to augment its human fitness function with a neural network, in an attempt to ease the fitness bottleneck inherent in musical IGAs. Specifically, a cascade correlation technique was used with data taken from populations of musical ideas trained by human mentors interactively. We conclude with a discussion of why this approach failed, and we speculate on approaches that might work.

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GenJam in Transition: from Genetic Jammer to Generative Jammer

GenJam, short for Genetic Jammer, is an evolutionary computation (EC) based software agent that m... more GenJam, short for Genetic Jammer, is an evolutionary computation (EC) based software agent that models a jazz improviser. Recently GenJam has evolved away from its roots as an interactive genetic algorithm toward its current state as an autonomous generative system. GenJam has retained its chromosome-based representations and mappings, its intelligent selection, crossover and mutation operators, and its real-time interactive performance

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Autonomous GenJam: Eliminating the Fitness Bottleneck by Eliminating Fitness

This paper f ocuses on a successful attempt t o eliminate the fitness bottleneck in GenJam, an in... more This paper f ocuses on a successful attempt t o eliminate the fitness bottleneck in GenJam, an interactive genetic a lgorithm that performs jazz improvisation, by eliminating the need for fitness. This was accomplished b y seeding an initial population o f melodic ideas with ph rases selected from a database of published jazz licks, and employing an intelligent crossover

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Northeast Artificial Intelligence Consortium annual report. 1988 artificial intelligence applications to speech recognition. Volume 8. Interim report, January-December 1988

This report describes progress that has been made in the fourth year of the existence of the NAIC... more This report describes progress that has been made in the fourth year of the existence of the NAIC on the technical research tasks undertaken at the member universities. The topics covered in general are: versatile expert system for equipment maintenance, distributed AI for communications system control, automatic photointerpretation, time-oriented problem solving, speech understanding systems, knowledge base maintenance, hardware architectures for

Interactive GenJam: Integrating real-time performance with a genetic algorithm

This presentation will describe and demonstrate recent enhancements to GenJam, an interactive gen... more This presentation will describe and demonstrate recent enhancements to GenJam, an interactive genetic algorithm jazz improviser. The most significant enhancement incorporates a pitch-to-MIDI capability, which allows GenJam to integrate human improvisations into its own improvisations. Specifically, when GenJam "trades fours" with a human, it listens to the human's last four measures, maps what it hears to its chromosome representation, mutates the chromosomes, and plays the result as its next four. In other words, GenJam evolves what it "hears" into what it will play in real time. Other recent enhancements are also discussed.

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Northeast Artificial Intelligence Consortium Annual Report 1987. Volume 6. Artificial Intelligence Applications to Speech Recognition

PL,.f =a f~ to od Am a" to agnm ~w I has p w v f~f ton Mv to wwm tu~cW c ainuvi d"= 14. SUBJECTTE... more

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A studio model approach to teaching introductory object-oriented programming and problem-solving usi

Al Biles

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