Two-part Invention: Creating at the Interface of Art and Science
Diana Dabby, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Music, Olin College
April 13, 2007
Abstract
A chaotic mapping provides a technique for generating musical variations of an original piece. Based on the sensitivity of chaotic trajectories to initial conditions, the technique employs two chaotic trajectories that map the pitch sequence of a musical score into a variation based on the pitch events of a given piece. The variations can be close to the original, diverge from it substantially, or achieve degrees of variability between those extremes. The same technique can also infuse a piece with musical attributes, e.g., pitches, outside its own musical event space. More generally, it can produce variations on any sequence of context-dependent symbols, e.g., parsed pixel sequences from scanned art work. The chaotic mapping provides two mechanisms - linking and tracking - to help the variation retain its connection to the original. Using the technique as an idea generator, the musician can accept, reject or alter any variation. Each accepted change in the variation is a thought-out process, as is the addition of notes (or rhythms) not in the original. A composer writing a variation suggested by this technique will listen for the more far-reaching implications of the variation, and decide whether - at least intuitively - the resulting language is self-consistent on both foreground and background levels. Once variations of an entire piece are available, the composition can change with successive hearings, from performance to performance, or even within the same concert. In a broad sense, the music has become dynamic - it changes with time much the same way as a river changes from day to day, season to season, yet is still recognized in its essence.
Biography
Diana Dabby has taught at MIT, Tufts University and Juilliard. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and a B.S. in electrical engineering from City College of New York. In addition, she holds an M.F.A. in music from Mills College as well as a B.A. in music from Vassar College. While at MIT, Dr. Dabby combined music and engineering in her application of chaos theory to musical variation. She has given a number of concert/lectures on her work sponsored the National Association of Schools of Music, MIT, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth , IEEE, FIRST Place of New Hampshire , New Horizons in Science, and Harvard. She has been heard on NPR member station WBUR-FM as well as at the Siemens Foundation "Beautiful Minds, Beautiful Music" Symposium at Carnegie Hall. As a concert pianist, Dr. Dabby has performed solo concerts in New York's Weill (Carnegie) Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall and at venues in Budapest and Hong Kong, among others. As a chamber musician, and as a composer, she has performed at Boston's Jordan Hall, Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood. Her latest work September Quartet, a 5-movement work scored for voices, winds, brass, percussion, violin and piano, was commissioned to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Tufts University.