CSE 599/MUS 494/MUS 594

An iterative, process-oriented creative research course exploring interdisciplinary approaches to sound, performance, and design, with a focus on prototyping for AI and the live performing arts. Students work across composition, performance, visual design, technology, and spatial practice to develop hybrid works that blur boundaries between object, sound, and event. The course emphasizes experimentation with emerging tools and methods, including AI-assisted collaboration, interactive machine learning, information retrieval systems, and the design of performative instruments and artifacts.

Through critical and creative inquiry, students engage contemporary AI-driven artistic practices while examining questions of authorship, copyright, ethics, labor, and the proliferation of “AI slop.” The course combines technical engagement with AI tools and critical frameworks for understanding their cultural and artistic implications. Students explore how we “play” space and how space “plays” us, prototyping systems and environments that expand musical and performative vocabularies.

The course culminates in the development and presentation of new works produced through iterative cycles of research, testing, and refinement. Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students in performance, composition, production, and related fields. Students are expected to both create and perform work.

Offerings

Spring 2026 Syllabus. Co-taught with Prof. Steph Richards.