Abduction and meaning in evolutionary soundscapes

Abstract

The creation of an artwork named RePartitura is discussed here under the principles of Evolutionary Computation (EC) and the triadic model of thought: Abduction, Induction and Deduction, as conceived by Charles S. Peirce. RePartitura uses a custom-designed algorithm to map image features from a collection of drawings and an Evolutionary Sound Synthesis (ESSynth) computational model that dynamically creates sound objects. The output of this process is an immersive computer generated sonic landscape, i.e. a synthesized Soundscape. The computer generative paradigm used here comes from the EC methodology where the drawings are interpreted as a population of individuals as they all have in common the characteristic of being similar but never identical. The set of specific features of each drawing is named as genotype. Interaction between different genotypes and sound features produces a population of evolving sounds. The evolutionary behavior of this sonic process entails the self-organization of a Soundscape, made of a population of complex, never-repeating sound objects, in dynamic transformation, but always maintaining an overall perceptual self-similarity in order to keep its cognitive identity that can be recognize by any listener. In this article we present this generative and evolutionary system and describe the topics that permeate from its conceptual creation to its computational implementation. We underline the concept of self-organization in the generation of soundscapes and its relationship with computer evolutionary creation, abductive reasoning and musical meaning for the computational modeling of synthesized soundscapes.