Performative Transactions: Worlding Compositional Ecosystems

This artistic research doctorate by a music composer investigates how emerging technologies—especially artificial intelligence and blockchain—transform artistic roles and compositional practices. Combining compositional experimentation, philosophical inquiry, and the creation of the course Posthuman Creativity Labs: Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain in Music, the research redefined four artistic roles: artists as operators of intelligent tools, curators of agential assemblages, builders of intelligent systems, and worlders of artistic ecosystems. Each role introduced new compositional methods explored through theory and practice. Addressing the need for ecosystems where human and non-human agents can build transparently on one another’s work, the project employed creative prototyping, speculative design, and iterative development to imagine and construct such a system. It proposed a Decentralised Creative Network (DCN)—blockchain-based environment where humans and AI co-compose generative, self-modifying musical structures within a mode termed allagmatic composition (composing for epistemic rather than algorithmic complexity). At its core are Performative Transactions (PTs): modular, executable contributions that encode and transform compositional processes. Through both analysis and artistic creation, the thesis establishes a model of posthuman composition founded on procedural transparency, recursive design, and decentralised collaboration.