Music Evolution: from Biology to Artificial Intelligence

Music emerges at different temporal, geographical and societal scales. It is shaped by cognitive processes, human interactions, environmental conditions, and physical limits. It leverages sound as medium and can manifest itself in a vast variety of ways, from outstanding works of art to the coordination of collective action and ritual, to shaping our emotions. Seen through the lens of complex adaptive systems, music is a continuously evolving dynamical entity that emerges from the following key features: It emerges from interactions among multiple elements, from single tone frequencies to pitches, from melodic and harmonic constructs to compositions, from the interaction of individual performers to the effect on individuals and groups, from song corpora to the cultural evolution of genres, etc. The system is adaptive, it evolves and adapts in a feedback loop that involves current and past interactions. And the patterns seen at the level of the collective differ from those seen in the constitutive elements. Only through the multiscale network of these complex interactions can music emerge.

To approach these questions and more, the Music Evolution: from Biology to Artificial Intelligence working group will bring to SFI international scholars with a broad range of expertise: from biomusicology to evolutionary anthropology, from music cognition to neuroscience, from cultural evolution to artificial intelligence. Together we will develop approaches to bridge disciplines and explore deep connections. The choice of WG participants highlights the range of scales, both temporal and socio-spatial, at which the evolution and complexity of music can be studied and brings together perspectives that range from seconds to million years, and from solitary brains, to scores, to social movements.