Alexandre R.J. Francois

Here are some videos taken during improvisation sessions with MIMI, the system I am developing with my collaborators Elaine Chew and Dennis Thurmond (the performer on the videos). For more information on the project, see the project web site . Improvisations on Happy Birthday (oracle by Elaine Chew) Fantasy/Prelude Walking bass Funk/Fusion

"The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the "real meaning" of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all. Rich meaning-networks, however, give you many different ways to go: if you can't solve a problem one way, you can try another. True, too many indiscriminate connections will turn your mind to mush. But well-connected meaning structures let you turn ideas around in your mind, to consider alternatives and envision things from many perspectives until you find one that works. And that's what we mean by thinking!" Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind .

MuSA.RT Opus 2: real-time tonal analysis and visualizations in concert. Video of live performance by Elaine Chew, at USC's Alfred Newman Recital Hall, during rehearsal for "The Mathematics in Music." The MuSA.RT system is by Elaine Chew and Alexandre Francois. (Video captured on a Canon S500 Digital Elph camera, afternoon of Jan 24, 2007.)

A couple of weeks ago, Elaine Chew gave a spectacular lecture/recital titled The Mathematics in Music . She performed Tamar Diesendruck's Sudoku Variations for the piece's world premiere, Ivan Tcherepnin's Fetes - Variations on Happy Birthday and Peter Child's Doubles III . The performance of Fetes was accompanied by a live real-time visualization of the tonal structures of the piece as computed by the MuSA .RT system (which I created with Chew). The project demo page links to video excerpts captured during rehearsal.