A master thesis from Aalborg University
Bard: Software Development for Algorithmic Composition: Making Music out of Chess Games in Real-Time
[Bard: Software Development for Algorithmic Composition]
Author(s)
Term
4. Term
Education
Publication year
2022
Submitted on
2022-04-07
Pages
49 pages
Abstract
This project investigates the creative interpolation of music into the game of chess. The combination of the data coming from a chess notation system with a chess engine's calculations, constitutes a sufficient amount of input information for the development of a method for algorithmic composition that could provide a meaningful musical narration to a chess game being played. If the processing of these chess-related pieces of data is taken as a function of the music tonal system, then the sonified output could evoke feelings that appeal to how chess players experience the positions of their game. To test the algorithmic composition method that was developed for such a concept, this project juxtaposed a variation of the software to the participants of the experiment, one that does not really interact with their moves on the chessboard, but with another, prerecorded sum of moves. The participants to the experiment were asked the same questions about their experience with interacting with the two systems without knowing which variation truly interacts with their moves. After comparing, contrasting and analyzing the collected data, the interacting algorithm scored higher than its predefined counterpart in all proposed questions, thus indicating that the musical outcome can be meaningfully perceived.
Keywords
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