Website: metacreation.net/beatbender
BeatBender helps musicians create unique and aesthetically-pleasing beats. The musician sets constraints that direct six computer percussionists, who in turn influence each other to create a new beat.
‘BeatBender uses a behaviour-based model to elicit emergent rhythmic output from six autonomous agents. From an artistic perspective, the rules used to define the agent behaviour provide a simple but original composition language. This language allows the composer to express simple and meaningful constraints that direct the behaviour of the agent-percussionists…What is striking is that these rhythmic patterns, whose complexity is beyond human grasp, are both musically interesting and aesthetically pleasing.’