Entropy and Agency in AI-assisted Composition and Performance

This lecture explores the balance between entropy and agency in AI-assisted composition and performance. Through his recent works, Mantautas Krukauskas examines how tools like RAVE, Orchidea, and Composer’s Assistant shape music as a negotiation between unpredictability and control, as well as existing and created agency. By integrating concepts like the free energy principle and entropy, this presentation proposes a hypothetical framework to define the acting elements of AI-assisted creation and performance. Habitual intuition can be supplemented with variable-sensitive processes through deliberate, slow thinking, where decisions on entropy, dataset curation, and choice of algorithm design become central to authorship and new dynamics in artistic use of digital tools.