The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded 50,000 euros to the project ‘The times they are AI-changin’: how engaging with artificial intelligence affects creativity in the music industry’ by Dr Yosha Wijngaarden (assistant professor of media and creative industries at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC)). The grant is given within the SGW Open Competition, which promotes free, curiosity-driven research within the Social Sciences and Humanities.
AI and the creative process
‘The times they are AI-changin‘’ is about the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and the profound changes it is bringing about within the music industry. The project explores how musicians are adapting their creative process to AI tools. In collaboration with Thunderboom Records, a music industry innovation lab, Wijngaarden examines how musicians use and interact with AI tools during their creative process. She interviews musicians before, during and after their interaction with AI tools to explore what added value they believe experimenting with AI brings, and how they experience and evaluate it.
Changes in the music industry
In doing so, she also looks at what musicians want to achieve with it, what succeeds and fails, and how AI can change music making as a whole. For instance, will AI make it easier for musicians to develop and experiment with sounds? And where are the challenges in interacting with AI tools? In this way, Wijngaarden hopes to gain new insights into the collaboration between humans and AI in the music industry.
About Thunderboom
Wijngaarden's research partner, Thunderboom Records, is a leading institute for democratising new music technology such as AI, mobile holograms and avatars. Its aim is to level the playing field in the music industry by giving artists, professionals and organisations access to fair, safe and user-friendly technology.
One project that Thunderboom is facilitating and that Wijngaarden is joining for her research is ‘Get Back’. This project builds physical AI robots that generate music in real-time jam sessions, allowing musicians to communicate and improvise through their instruments without ever touching a computer. Another project involved is ‘WAIVE’, which uses data from the public domain, such as heritage archives, to train generative AI models and create innovative music tools for live performers.
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