Performing in the Assemblage: Virtuosity in AI-Mediated Environments
Using Csikszentmihalyi’s Systems Model of Creativity, Deleuze and Guattari’s Assemblage Theory, and Rowe’s classification of interactive computer music systems, this article explores how AI-mediated environments for real-time, human-machine co-collaboration transform the ontological and political meaning of performance virtuosity from the vantages of the composer, performer, and the audience. The case study analysis and subsequent discussion emphasize the centrality of the human in environments where expertise is distributed throughout a network of technological assemblages. Advocating for inefficient, localized, individuated practices of AI-mediated musicking, this reframing of virtuosity is a response to a post-generative era in which music can be created with unprecedented ease and efficiency.