Norah Lorway, Edward Powley, Arthur Wilson
Scorch is a new domain specific music programming language designed by Norah Lorway, Edward Powley and Arthur Wilson with the intention of being an accessible entry point for those not experienced in traditional programming languages (Lorway et al 2022). Initially used for algorithmic composition as a MIDI generating VST plugin, Scorch is also being used for live coding and a variety of media computing applications.
Scorch incorporates various AI implementations meant to assist users with various musical and computing tasks. Amongst these include an AI collaborator called Autopia (Lorway et al 2021) which allows for collaboration with AI and human performers in live coding contexts. Autopia was designed by the present authors to explore the three-way interaction between AI, human performer and audience — the AI uses an evolutionary algorithm seeded with human-written code and guided by live audience feedback. Originally developed for use with SuperCollider, this workshop will be the debut of the version of Autopia developed for use with Scorch.