Tertiary Protentions is Nicola L. Hein’s solo project working with artificial intelligence in a solo real-time format. It develops a software agent that is capable of learning the human musicians’ musical gestures and idioms in real-time.
The human and the machine musician develop an integrative system of musical materials and agency that integrates different strata of action.
The interaction is coined by a form of “cybernetic listening”, the human-machine system’s listening for influx by itself, creating and stimulation a feedback of action between human and machine.
This interaction happens in an intelligently acting multichannel environment, harnessing the potentials of autonomous spatialisation.
The result is a play between human and machine, utilizing what the great French philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler would have called “Tertiary Protentions”: The conception of future by the means of technology.