Public Presentation: Wednesday, May 23, 1-2:30pm Art Department Seminar Room D101
The level of synchronization in distributed systems is often controlled by the strength of interaction between the individual elements. If the elements are neurons in small brain circuits, the characteristic event is the ‘firing time’ of a particular neuron. We have been developing software musical instruments, installations and music, which utilize the triggering of sonic events, including grains of live sampled audio and musical instructions, when any one of a network of artificial spiking neurons ‘fires’. The synchrony or decoupling of these characteristic events is partially controlled by modifications in the strength of the connections between the artificial neurons under the influence of spike timing dependent plasticity, which adapts the strengths of neuronal connections according to the relative firing times of connected neurons.