For entities that are subject to the domain of science & art, we study the problem of 'abstraction-representation-formalisation' of entities, the perception of 'abstracted-represented-formalised' entities and the interaction between these two.

As an initial methodology, we take music as a sort of test-case, because of:

its rather well-definedness;
its important role during scientific history;
the primal role that sound plays in the process of perception; and
the easy link that can be made with other science &art-forms.

Moreover, since mind-body related questions have always been considered a key-problem of music research, we also touch upon one of the most intriguing problems in science.

Origins

The Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) at the Free University of Brussels is an interdisciplinary research center, in which people from a wide range of backgrounds are active. The philosopher Leo Apostel founded it in 1986 to join people from different disciplines so that they could join world views in an integrating as well as in a mutually supporting way.

Except for the collaborators who have internationally recognised positions in different research areas (foundations of physics, cybernetics, quantum mathematics, biology, artificial intelligence, amongst others), the center also organised the 'Einstein Meets Magritte' conference. The conference was mainly realised by the physicist and mathematician Prof. Diederik Aerts and many leading world-wide authorities participated. To mention a few: Heinz Von Foerster, the father of cybernetics and systems theory; Nobel-price winner Ilya Prigogine, one of the fathers of chaos and non-linear dynamics; Chris Langton, the founder of the research on artificial life; the biologist William H. Calvin; the economist Ricardo Petrella; and the writer Robert Pirsig all made contributions. The world-wide success of this conference gave a financial and moral boost to CLEA that enabled it to attract new collaborators and gave the ability to start conceptually ambitious research projects. Due to a common interest and activities in the past by some CLEA collaborators in the domain of music (as well in avant-garde as in classical music) and due to a strong request by artists and musicians who are participating in CLEA, the board of directors decided to start a research unit 'Music as Science and Art' in the spring of 1996 .

A somewhat idealistic motivation for our research

Starting with music as a key research theme, we aim for results in two directions:

Obviously we aim for input for the discussion on perception and abstraction in science and art. Clearly, such results and discussions contribute to the understanding of standard philosophical themes like the mind-body question, the world views problem (synthesis versus post-modernism) and to the general philosophy of science.
The study of music will obviously lead to explicit research in more established scientific areas (mathematics, computer science, psychology, . . .), which can develop into hard exclusive research within these areas.

Thus, there are in fact three layers in which we aim to work:

the science & art-layer,
the music-layer and
the layer of the related existing scientific areas.

We remark that the notation "science & art" is introduced to exclude a polarisation into an ordinary study of art, or art inspired by science, but to push an effective interaction. Within the Music-layer we aim for an entanglement of science and art, i.e., an entanglement of formalisation and analysis on the one hand, and composition and performance on the other. Therefore, we need a collaboration of both scientists and composers. For a good access to the existing knowledge, it is also important that specialists of all adherent scientific fields (physics, mathematics, psychology, informatics, musicology, philosophy of science, . . .) take part in the collaboration. Nonetheless, the presence of these three layers of research makes it possible for different collaborators to participate in different intensities, and also to organise sub-collaborations (for example: tackling a specific mathematical problem is not necessarily inspiring for everyone who is interested in the science & art-topic).

We can conclude that we aim for an approach that has the following dual content:

We study music within a wider scope of typical questions on general perception and abstraction, i.e., we aim for a more 'universal' point of view as it usually the case, this to avoid narrow-minded incestuous overkill.
We study science & art by taking music as a test-case, i.e., we concentrate on a well-defined subject to avoid exponential 'meta'-sation, what usually only leads to endless discussions.

In this way we hope to realise real interdisciplinary research, and touch some of the very old mysteries of science (mind-body), without the loss of explicit 'hard output'.

Running Projects

1) Virtual Conduction

Virutal Conduction is a CLEA-DADO collaboration towards a virtual conductor and composer for improvised and actually performed composed music.

"Conduction" is an expression introduced by Butch MORRIS (Composer, USA) in 1985 in his work: "Current Trends in Racism in Modern America" The Kitchen NYC. It is a contraction between "Conduct" and "Improvisation". Composition and improvisation always is a problem in larger orchestras. This functional and flexible method gives the conductor the means to compose during the performance by utilizing a rather wide panoply of manual gestures in accordance with the musicians and exploits all the possibilities and sound-colors to each one of the musicians-improvisers.

In collaboration with some leading jazz and avant-garde musicians we try to realize some new ways of dynamical interactions between 'composition', 'performance', score-generation, sound-generation and spacing. This closely entangled collaboration between (us!) scientists and musicians enables us to push and test our ideas within actual projects arising from practising artists.
Intended performances

... De Maalbeek, Etterbeek Brussels (March 21st, 1997)
... Antwerp (August 1997)
... Brussels (Aula VUB, First week of October 1997)
... Brussels (December 97)

2) Sound Seeing

A CLEA-NMT collaboration: An attempt in order to see music and to improvise on images.

Real time image generation on instruments that are especially developed to obtain an as intuitive as possible 'intuition' of the generated images. The objective is to obtain the generated image as close as possible to the played music, whatever this might mean. We develop the necessary software tools for a real time interaction and an easy adaptation of the visual output such that it corresponds as much as possible with what on 'hears to see'.

3) Einmag-harmonies

During the 'Einstein meets Magritte' conference we have recorded the main speeches on DAT. Currently, we are puzzling parts of these seminars into a kind of harmonical soundscape (expression borrowed from Noise Maker's Fifes) by adding some contemporary musical sounds, rhythms and syntactical ideas.

4) Quantum Music

A CLEA-FUND collaboration: implementation of concepts and structures within musical scores.

In analogy with the use of fractal and chaotic structures in music we try to push quantum structures within the general scheme of music formalization, composition and automatic generation. Such structures have intensively been studied for quite some time by an international research community, namely the International Quantum Structures Association (IQSA).

In analogy with the automated composing procedures developed in the eighties following the mathematical objects of fractals and chaotic phenomena resulting from non-linear behaviour we push the specific mathematical structures originating from quantum physics (or more general, quantum mathematics to which belongs quantum logic's, quantum communication and quantum computing-like formal protocols) within the general scheme of music formalization, composition and automatic generation. Such structures have intensively been studied for quite some time by an international research community, namely the International Quantum Structures Association (IQSA). Starting from summer 1996 and for at least two years, the secretary is seated at CLEA. The presence in CLEA of physicists and mathematicians working in the field of quantum mathematics, i.e., the presence of a kitchen of quantum mathematics, delivers the ideal context to realise this project in optimal conditions. The current research topics within this program are:

1. Projective Chord Generation.

We identify chords in musical scores with projectors on Hilbert space, i.e., with the linear subspaces of a Hilbert space. This allows a vectorial calculus in order to obtain chord sequences, in a way very similar to the quantum calculations.

2. Sound synthesis and formal composition through tensor-like correlations.

Object-oriented sound- or scoregeneration by applying the universal property of a tensor-prodcut within a category of mathematical objects.

3. Contextual components and their applications for musical formalization.

For the moment there are two explicit physical tools which we are implementing within music formalization, i.e., the hidden measurement scheme, which is a mathematical solution for the modelisation of unknown contextual interaction. The second tool is non-dispersive collapse dynamics without 'mixing' by which we mean dynamics according to the Gisin-Piron equation.

Intended lectures

We have planned some lectures, but no dates have been fixed yet.

Working papers

Bob Coecke: Quantum Music: A Mathematical Motivation for Going beyond the Border of a Determining Score.

For more information please contact

Bob Coecke

VUB-CLEA-MUSIC

Pleinlaan 2

B-1050 Brussels

Belgium

email: bocoecke@vub.ac.be

Phone:	++32/2/629.36.56 ++32/2/629.36.55
Secretariate:	++32/2/644.26.77
Fax:	++32/2/644.07.44
Home:	++32/2/520.99.29

Collaborators

Research and organisation:

1) Permanent Team

Bob Coecke (PhD mathematics and physics, electro-acoustic artist)

Didier Durlinger (Computer scientist)

Isar Stubbe (Graduating student mathematics)

Mark Van Der Veken (Graduating student communication)

2) Project connected collaborators

Dirk Aerts (Prof. mathematics and physics, Quantum Music project)

Linda Dasseville (PhD student philosophy, singer, Virtual Conduction Project)

Geert Feytons (Audio-visual artist, Sound Seeing project)

Eric Faes (Sound technician, Virtual Conduction Project, Sound Seeing Project)

Eddy Loozen (musician/composer, Virtual Conduction Project)

Gabriël Sevrin (electro-acoustic artist, Einmag Harmonies Project)

3) External collaborator

Ronny Damoiseau (Electro-acoustic artist)

4) Project supporting organisations

Dienst Cultuur VUB (Virtual Conduction project)
VZW Dado (Improvised music) (VZW means "not for profit organization")
VZW NMT-productions (Experimental music, dance and film, Sound Seeing project)
VZW BOCMO (Virtual Conduction project)
Scarlet Cities (Avant Garde and Improvised Jazz)
Jardin D'Usure (Experimental music)
Research Unit FUND, Mathematics department, Science Faculty, (Quantum Music project)

Locations

Places for experiments:

CLEA-music studio at Krijgskundestraat 33, 1160 Brussels.
IJskelders VUB: Waversesteenweg 1015, 1160 Brussels.

Some requests to you

As almost every scientific or artistic unit, we have to struggle to cope with our financial and logistic needs. Thus, we're open for any additional sponsoring or collaboration that might help us on this level.

We're also open for your ideas and suggestions or collaborations on the level of new or running projects. Contact us!

(This site was last updated on December 21st 1996)