Converging Creativity : Intertwining Music and Code

Abstract: This compilation thesis is a collection of case studies that presents examples of creative coding in various contexts, focusing on how such practice led to the creation and exploration of musical expressions, and how I in- interact with the design of the code itself. My own experience as a music composer influences this thesis work. By saying so, I mean that although the thesis places itself in the Sound and Music Computing academic tradition, it is also profoundly founded upon a personal artistic perspective. This perspective has been the overarching view that has informed the studies included in the thesis, despite all being quite different. The first part of the thesis describes the practice of creative coding, creativity models, and the interaction between code and coder. Then I propose a perspective on creative coding based on the idea of asymptotic convergence of creativity. This is followed by a presentation of five papers and three music works, all inspected through my stance on this creative practice. Finally, I examine and discuss these works in detail, concluding by suggesting that the asymptotic convergence of creativity framework might serve as a useful tool that adds to the literature on creative coding practice, especially for situations in which such work is carried out in an academic research setting.