Nonhuman Companionship: Practicing Free Improvisation Through Interaction with Machines

Abstract Free improvisation is a musical genre that defies traditional forms of music-making, defining itself by its absences, creating a particular environment that imposes challenges on those trying to learn it and to educators inspired to teach it. Ensemble practice is considered, by many improvisers, the most suitable method for practicing the genre. But should it be the only one? The article discusses different approaches to learning free improvisation, proposing the use of interactive musical systems as a feasible alternative to the problem, by presenting a custom-designed improvisation machine as a model example and preliminary evaluations of the system.