Markov Constraints

[kram1032]

Markov Constraints are a pretty new idea which basically give the well known Markov Processes which can emulate, for instance, the overall feel of music additional power to also emulate structural constraints which ensure that the produced result is more like what you are looking for.

Here are four papers on the topic:
http://www.csl.sony.fr/publications.php?keyword=markov+constraints

This is a musical sequence that was created by feeding 22 blues songs of a blues artist into the system and putting two constraints to what the output system is supposed to be (a "blues" constraint so that the end result actually sounds like blues, and a second constraint that makes sure it sounds interesting) http://francoispachet.fr/markovconstraints/audio/boulez_blues.mp3
It's some of the best fully computer-generated music I've ever heard.

here is a video, roughly showing the process of how the above mp3 was generated:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/WvFr9rt2Ggw&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/WvFr9rt2Ggw&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

The same kind of technology applied to text creation instead of music. A little less convincing in that the text seems pretty nonsensical, but even so, it's a huge step forward from earlier software I saw that acted like this
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/eLm64HVtadc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/eLm64HVtadc&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

An older project of them is called continuator
http://francoispachet.fr/continuator/continuator.html
See some videos of it in action on the right. The very first one is glitched out but the others work just fine.

Then there is Miror
http://www.mirorproject.eu/

and Virtuoso
http://francoispachet.fr/virtuoso/virtuoso.html
which are newer incarnations of the concept.

Their most recent thing seems to be
http://flow-machines.com/
but there isn't a whole lot there yet.

I tried to find uses of this concept by other people but so far I didn't find any. I'm sure some really interesting stuff could be done with this - besides the very intersting stuff, those guys already produced.


If you prefer, all those videos on the right of those various pages can be found on YouTube on this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/SonyCSLParis/videos?view=0
Though there are more of other stuff.

[kram1032]

There also is a Miror Wiki
http://mirorwiki.eu/
which contains, amongst other things, what appears to be "collaborations" between young children and the miror software, in a similar way to the videos shown by virtuoso. I for some reason can't view the video, however, and the audio stuff is midi only, which is fine, but I can't see where precisely it comes from. Oh well, still interesting. I just wish I knew what parts are by children and which by the software.