Engaging with Sonic Emergence: Cybernetics, Generative AI, and Distributed Agency in Posthuman Music

This doctoral project investigates posthuman music-making through a practice-based approach in which human composition and performance, sonic feedback, and generative AI interact within a shared musical environment. From a cybernetic perspective, feedback is understood as an active process through which sonic information is continually changed by the systems it passes through, while AI is treated as a technological medium with a high degree of autonomy. Both introduce perturbations into the shaping of sound and music, a process otherwise largely guided by the composer-performer's decisions. Across activities including electronic lutherie, system design, composition, performance, and installation, the research develops compositional, performative, and system-design practices through which musical form can emerge from decisions and actions that are continuously mediated and remodulated by three interacting agents: the human, the sonic, and the artificial intelligence one. The research explores how musical practice can move beyond the centrality of human agency towards a posthuman approach to music-making.