Antonio Pošćić’s research while affiliated with University of Zagreb and other places

Awareness about the immense impact that artificial intelligence (AI) might have or already has made on the social, economic, political, and cultural realities of our world has become part of the mainstream public discourse. Attributes such as ethical, responsible, or explainable emerge as associative and descriptive nominal references in guidelines that influence perspectives on AI application and development. This paper contextualizes the notions of suitability and desirability of principles, practices, and tools related to the use of AI in the arts. The result is a framework drafted as a set of atomic attributes that summarize the values of AI deemed important for artistic creativity. It was composed by examining the challenges that AI poses to art production, distribution, consumption, and monetization. Considering the differentiating potentials of AI and taking a perspective aside from the purely technical ontology, we argue that artistically pertinent AI should be unexpected, diversified, affordant, and evolvable.

Awareness about the immense impact that artificial intelligence (AI) might have or already has made on the social, economic, political, and cultural realities of our world has become part of the mainstream public discourse. Attributes such as ethical, responsible, or explainable emerge as associative and descriptive nominal references in guidelines that influence perspectives on AI application and development. This paper contextualizes the notions of suitability and desirability of principles, practices, and tools related to the use of AI in the arts. The result is a framework drafted as a set of atomic attributes that summarize the values of AI deemed important for artistic creativity. It was composed by examining the challenges that AI poses to art production, distribution, consumption, and monetization. Considering the differentiating potentials of AI and taking a perspective aside from the purely technical ontology, we argue that artistically pertinent AI should be unexpected, diversified, affordant, and evolvable.

Anastatica is a musical experience for musician, algorithm, and audience that combines performative elements with the characteristics of an installation. It ex- plores, in real time, the relationship between human performers and generative algorithms, allowing them to interact constructively or destructively using the same language and influenced by non-deterministic factors. Each performance is thus laced with randomness. Through this interplay of acousmatic, aleatoric live coding, the piece questions the nature of artificial intelligence’s involvement in modern society and the illusion of choice in the digital age.

Live coding, as a practice of computer programming used to create music and digital media, represents a novel and relevant form of contemporary artistic practice. The notion of automating the process of live coding entails interesting philosophical, conceptual, and technical questions. While touching upon all these implications, this paper focuses on design decisions and technical aspects as responds to artistic requirements on such a generative, interactive system intended for generating computer code as makeshift music scores. With the existing assortment of techniques for algorithmic composition and text generation, one of the challenges was selecting the most appropriate approach for the task. We noticed a strong interdependence between material (a base corpus of source code) and the process (the generative algorithm) which motivated a novel, hybrid approach that targeted both the required systematization of the corpus and devising a custom algorithmic solution.

The constant evolution of philosophical views on art is interwoven with trajectories of accelerating technological development. In the current vehement emergence of generative algorithms there is an immediate need for making sense of modern technologies that increasingly seem to step in the realm that has been reserved for humans-creativity. This paper aims to understand the role of the human in generative art by demystifying implications of black-box generative algorithms and their applications for artistic purposes. First, we present examples of current practice and research in generative art with a special interest in music that served as foundation for our work. Then, we introduce Anastatica (2020), a part performance, part installation built on the basis of data-driven generative live coding. Finally, we discuss the various implications of AI in art through a case study rooted in Anastatica's development and performance. Here we trace the path from algorithms to intelligence, applying both musical and computer science theory to a practical case of generating a live coding musical performance, with special focus given to aesthetic, compositional, conceptual, and phenomenological implications.

The constant evolution of philosophical views on arts is interwoven with the trajectories of accelerating technological amelioration. In the current prominent emergence of generative algorithms there is an immediate need for making sense of modern technologies that more and more seem to step in the realm that has been reserved for humans-creativity. This paper aims at demystifying implications of black-box generative algorithms by: 1) depicting the current state of practice and research in this interdisciplinary field, 2) dissecting and examining the constitutional characteristics of artificial agents: artificialness and intelligence, and 3) applying the resulting implicit theory to a practical case of generating a live coding musical performance.

Live coding is a practice of computer programming used to create music and digital media that strongly relies on improvisation. While live coding, as a relevant form of contemporary artistic practice, is a lucrative research topic, improvisation in this interdisciplinary setting is scarcely systematically explored. This paper investigates modalities of improvisation and its relation to composition in live coding from multiple viewpoints. First, we provide an overview of improvisation in its historic and contemporary contexts identifying common traits of traditional, live electronics, and computer-aided improvisation. Then, we discuss and categorise modalities specific to live coding based on the nature of pre-written code and the types of real time interventions. Besides theoretical views, we present a case study-our practical experience with one of the improvisational modalities used to create music for a contemporary choreography.

As emerging infrastructural entities that enable human-computer conversation , chatbots open a plethora of possibilities in mediation of poetic content. The aim of this paper is to systematically explore various implications that arise from the conceptual role and technical possibilities of chatbots. Their conversational nature is a key differentiator in an assembly of existing media spaces that enables phenomena such as dynamism, non-lineari-ty, and inverse intentions, while also modifies the roles of medium, artist, and user.

Visual programming is an intuitive, yet comprehensive approach to music creation. This research explores contextual aspects related to discovery, learning, and use of different visual languages. We conducted a survey on 218 participants and quantitatively analyzed relations between relevant dimensions. Besides presenting the raw results of the analysis, we also provide their interpretations in form of guidelines for educators, visual language developers, and end-users that aim to help them achieve better, more productive interactions.

Computer music technology strongly influenced artistic expression by opening new possibilities in the field of sound creation, music composition, interaction, and multimedia. Efficient and flexible use of technology unavoidably implies expressing various concepts through computer programming. Luckily, the visual programming paradigm provides a more intuitive and understandable, yet comprehensive approach for musicians, and seems more adaptable than textual programming. However, programming skills are still required, so the question arises whether music education appropriately prepares musicians for the digital world and visual programming in particular. In this study we explore relations between education and usage of digital tools in terms of language discovery, learning curves, purposes of using, and overall proficiency. We conducted a survey along 162 professional and amateur musicians who are also users of a visual programming tool. The results suggest that while formal education does not have a significant impact on programming skills, it plays an important role in discovery and selection of programming tools.