AGENTBEATS

A freeware
artificial life
beat & music generator
experiment

INTRODUCTION

AGENTBEATS is software that generates MIDI-signals, not sounds.
The MIDI-signals are being created based on the “life” of software-AGENTs acting in a virtual (empty) world.
Interactions between the AGENTs in the universe determine the resulting evolution of the musical patterns.
Each AGENT has thus a musical pattern associated with it. And each agent has its own "behaviour" defined in terms of "relationships" with other AGENTs aswellas parameters defining their basic behaviour.
As AGENTBEATS does not directly generate sounds, these can be handled in any software or hardware that supports the MIDI-protocol, either as MIDI files or via a physical MIDI-port.

AGENTS

The agents screen shows the agents moving about in their empty universe.

BEATS

The beats screen displays the musical patterns associated with the agents, as they are normally perceived in a standard rhythm box or sequencer, except the fact that the "grid" is not fixed. This means that it is possible to have a pattern of 1/17 notes and play it along with one of 1/18 notes.
Each red square in the rhythm-grid represents a “hit” or a “note-on event”. The blue squares are potential "hits".

BEHAVIOUR

The relation between the behaviour of the agents and the effect they have on the rhythmical patterns is very precisely defined in terms of simple rules (they are further explained in previous sections), but the combination of the number of agents, the rules of behaviour and the random elements introduced (the different probabilities related to the rules f.ex.) result in a very complex mapping that even the author of the program does not completely understand.
The "social behaviour" of the agents is itself interesting to study, and the effect of changing the behavioural parameters can sometimes result in funny “societies”.
Some examples: to stop the patterns from moving (in relation to the 1-beat of the bar), set the solitude factor for all agents to 1.0, then they won’t interact and all patterns stay fixed at the current position. This is a somewhat “paranoid” society.
To get the patterns moving again, decrease the solitude factor and increase the breed probability. A more sociable society is the result.

MUSICAL SAMPLES

In order for you to get an idea of what this program is capable of I have made some tracks that can be listened to here:

AGENTBEAT 001
hifi lofi
AGENTBEAT 002
hifi lofi
AGENTBEAT 004
hifi lofi
AGENTBEAT 005
hifi lofi

Links go to m3u files that are in fact mp3 playlists, so you need to have software that can play mp3 files and manage playlists in order to use the links...

FURTHER

Currently I'm working on version 2, which will be a quite interesting piece of software, as it will enhance the AGENTBEATS thought into a more easy-to-use TOOL.
Get more information here.


Best,
Mikkel Bertelsen.

So I transmit the stafet to IXI-software.