Music and AI
Course learning goals span a wide range of domains, from technical to critical, and address various AI skills.
Course Info:
- MUSIC 356 / CS 470: "Music and AI"
- Winter 2024
- Instructor: Ge Wang
Pedagogy:
In order to create a learning experience that is both practical and philosophical, course learning goals span a wide range of domains, from technical to critical, and providing practice in using AI, creating AI applications, and questioning the impacts of AI.
Syllabus Excerpt with Learning Goals:
How do we make music with artificial intelligence? What does it mean to do so (and is it even a good idea)? How might we design systems that balance machine automation and human interaction? More broadly, how do we want to live with our technologies? Are there and ought there be limits to using AI for art? (And what is Art, anyway?) In this "critical making" course, students will learn practical tools and techniques for AI-mediated music creation, engineer software systems incorporating AI, HCI and Music, and critically reflect on the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of technology.
Coursework will span the practical ("how?"), the philosophical ("why?"), and the social ("for whom?"). Students will use these techniques and lenses to think as broadly as possible about the implications of AI in our world, and to design interactive AI tools that keep human judgment in the loop. Through these exercises, we will explore AI might augment, not replace, human creativity.
Course-specific Learning Goals
As a student, you will be able to (in ranked order of priority):
- Understand the various roles AI plays or could potentially play in music creation—and to be able to frame critical questions about Music and AI, considering technical, aesthetic, ethical, and cultural contexts.
- Conceptualize and prototype software systems, integrating AI and music.
- Demonstrate working knowledge of the tools used in this course, including audio and music synthesis in the ChucK programming language, Python/C++/PyTorch, Wekinator for interactive machine learning and music, and the newly developing ChAI (ChucK for AI).