Arne Eigenfeldt

Arne eigenfeldt 04

Arne Eigenfeldt (born 1962) is a Canadian composer and creator of interactive and generative music systems based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Both his music and his research into intelligent systems have been presented internationally. He is currently a professor of music at Simon Fraser University.[1–+] He also produces electronica under the pseudonyms Raemus[failed verification] and loadbang.[failed verification]

Quotes

• I’m a composer living in North Vancouver’s LoLo District. My day gig is a professor of music and technology at Simon Fraser University‘s School for the Contemporary Arts, where I teach some courses. I’m also an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Communication Art and Technology. I recently wrote an article for The Conversation on the impact of AI on artists. I also released a double vinyl album on RedShift Records.

• I spend a lot of time trying to make my computer help me compose by making it more intelligent. Specifically I’m involved in the notion of metacreation, which is imbuing computers with creative behaviour. Cycling74’s Gregory Taylor interviewed me. I also make robots – designed and built by Ajay Kapur – play my music. I’ve received some media attention about my work. I was interviewed on CBC Gem as well.

• I’ve was funded to work on musebots, which are virtual musical agents that collectively make music together. They have been presented as installations at ICCC, ISEA, Generative Art, NIME, SMC, xCoAx, and TIES, and, we put on a show in which humans played with the musebots. After a musebot code-jam in Byron Bay, Australia, I created an Imaginary Miles ensemble modeled after Miles Davis‘ Filles De Kilimanjaro and In A Silent Way ensemble circa 1969. Ollie Bown asked me to point my musebots towards making trap music (I asked “what’s trap music?”), and eight weeks later, they had an album on Spotify.

• I used to write a lot of music for Serge Bennathan‘s Dancemakers. An older CD of mine, music for Les Arbres d’Or, is available online. I’ve also got a piece on this CD and this one. But who really buys CDs anymore? Almost all of my music is available here.

• My one-time alternate persona still has music available online. It received airplay in, of all places, Macedonia, Croatia, Australia, and Michigan: one royalty check of $1.08 came from radio airplay in Vietnam!

• Some of this music is/was available via kolorform records (out of print), as well as on the German netaudio label 2063, the Chicago netlabel stasisfield, two Vancouver net-labels (kikapu and nishi). Writer Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet went so far as to include Nine Days as one of the albums that changed his life. Huh. Now raemus is on Spotify.

• I’m a member of the Canadian League of Composers (CLC), the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC), the International Computer Music Association (ICMA), SOCAN, and an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre.

• I can’t live without my Mac, (an M1 Max MacBook Pro). I like shiny things, and thus own both an iPhone and several iPads.

• I used to play squash way too much (formerly a low “A” level player, once ranked in the top 100 of all squash players in BC), but a serious disc injury stopped my competitive play. Then I played keeper for a +50 Men’s football (soccer) team – I’m also a huge fan of Arsenal FC – then had to give that up. Now I play in some bands and collect basses.

• I’ve written a lot of software for the Mac, all using Max/MSP. Check it out here.

• If you can believe it, this site was actually awarded a “Cool Site of the Day!” by Eye Magazine in 1995! Anyone else remember when the web was small enough that one could award something like that? If nothing else, it shows how long this site has been taking up bandwidth. Not only that, but this site seems to have outlived the Magazine…