NOEMI*, developed by the Parisian collective Music2eye, is a musical sculpture system that creates a musical dialog between a human player and an autonomous artificial organism.

NOEMI uses its active listening sensibility to accompany, convert or improve the musical performances of the participants. Its own behaviour also depends on its moods and tastes. But the most important component comes from the way people interact with it.

NOEMI can evaluate the quality of the musical exchange produced with a specific person, it can, for example, shorten the experiment when it has been disappointed by the human’s behaviour. NOEMI can correct discordant notes. But if the machine is fed up with the disharmonious sound, it can choose to accentuate the cacophony, or simply mute the sound. If no one wants to play with NOEMI, it just produces music on its own. However, to improve its musical abilities, NOEMI needs to encounter and play with many different musicians.

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* Numerical Organism Expecting Musical Interactions