Serendipity in Music

Fillip Maker Meetup 1.0 Serendipity 25 april 2019

Arnhem, the Netherlands 1

Serendipity in Music

Iwan WopereisMichiel Braam

Overview

• Introduction 15 min

• Experiment 15 min

• Discussion 15 min



Serendipity as input BIK BENT BRAAM





Definitions SERENDIPITY

• Making discoveries by accidents and sagacity, of things [someone is] not in quest of (Walpole, 1754)

• Observing an unanticipated, anomalous and strategic datum which becomes the occasion for developing a new theory or extending one (Merton & Barber, 2004)

Definitions SERENDIPITY

• An unexpected experience prompted by an individual’s valuable interaction with ideas, information, objects, or phenomena (McCay-Peet & Toms, 2015)

• An unsought finding (Van Andel, 1994)



Serendipity as output EXAMPLES

(Wopereis & Braam, 2018)

Cases

https://rockinfiles.com/sam-RC/Michiel Braam-1999-11-07.mp3



Case 1 TOXIC

During a search for musical information on YouTube, this system recommended MB to watch the music video ‘Toxic’ of pop musician Britney Spears. This recommendation surprised MB: “[This kind of music] takes place completely out of my comfort zone. Let’s say that Britney Spears does not have my direct interest. Excellent singer, nothing wrong with that, but it's not the kind of music I would normally listen to.”

Case 2 GLOBE

The rationale of the Globe project was to form a group of musicians from different corners of the world (i.c., The Tuva Ensemble from Tuva, The Bisserov Sisters from Bulgaria, The Ndere Troupe from Uganda, and improvisers Fred van Duynhoven and MB from the Netherlands) and perform a series of concerts at the Music Meeting [Nijmegen, NL] and other musical sites in the Netherlands.



(Corneli et al., 2018)

(McCay-Peet and Toms, 2018)



Model ELEMENTS

1. Trigger

2. Delay

3. Connection

4. Follow-up

5. Valuable outcome

6. Unexpected thread

7. Perception of serendipity

Model INFLUENCING FACTORS

1. Trigger-rich external

2. Highlights triggers external

3. Enables connection external

4. Enables capturing external

5. Openness internal

6. Ability to make connections internal

7. Prepared mind internal



Overview




Experiment affordances

• Parameter 1

• Parameter 2



Experiment constraints

• Constraint 1

• Constraint 2

Overview






Definitions CREATIVITY FEATURES

• Originality

• Effectiveness

• (Surprise)

(Runco & Jaeger, 2012)

Definitions CREATIVITY IS (NONCE)

• Novel for the individual

• Optionally novel for society

• Nondeterministic

• dependent on Criteria or constraints

• and based on Existing elements

(Johnson-Laird, 2002)



Serendipity in art

• ‘creative abuction’

• ‘finding without (explicitly) looking’?

(Van Andel, 1994)

(Improvisation; Loui, 2018)



Discussion PROPOSITIONS

• Serendipity is compatible with creativity?

• Improvisation is serendipity?

• Serendipity in action is impossible?

• Audiences experience serendipity?

References SELECTION• Corneli, J., Jordanous, A., Guckelsberger, C., Pease, A., & Colton, S. (2018). Modelling serendipity in a

computational context. Retrieved from arXiv:1411.0440v6

• Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2002). How jazz musicians improvise. Music Perception, 19, 415-442. doi:10.1525/mp.2002.19.3.415

• Loui, P. (2018). Rapid and flexible creativity in musical improvisation: review and a model. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1423, 138-145. doi:10.1111/nyas.13628

• McCay-Peet, L., & Toms, E. G. (2015). Investigating serendipity: How it unfolds and what may influence it. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66, 1463-1476. doi:10.1002/asi.23273

• Merton, R. K., & Barber, E. (2004). The travels and adventures of serendipity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

• Runco, M. A., & Jaeger, G. J. (2012). The standard definition of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 24, 92-96. doi:10.1080/10400419.2012.650092

• Van Andel, P. (1994). Anatomy of the unsought finding. Serendipity: origin, history, domains, traditions, appearances, patterns and programmability. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45, 631-648. doi:10.1093/bjps/45.2.631

• Wopereis, I., & Braam, M. (2018). Seeking serendipity: The art of finding the unsought in professional music. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 810, 503-512. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-74334-9_52



Questions

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Documents

Serendipity in Music