iSoundScape

iSoundScape is a new kind of interactive evolutionary computation (IEC) for musical works, which is inspired from a biological metaphor, adaptive walk on fitness landscapes.
This application enables you to explore your favorite musical works by walking through a virtual landscape of sounds called a fitness soundscape. There is a virtual two-dimensional plane that represents the genetic space of possible musical works. Several sound sources are placed near corresponding genotype positions, each specifying the kind of sounds and its relative location from the genotype. As you stand on the soundscape realized by the openAL with a head phone, you can hear sets of sounds generated from your neighboring genotypes at the same time. These sounds come from different directions depending on their relative position from you, and are played repeatedly.
By using the human abilities for localization and selective listening, you can walk in the direction of your favorite sounds. Because each newly appearing combination of sounds is similar but slightly different from your previous choice, you can choose more favorite one among them. Thus, adaptive walk through this landscape corresponds to the evolutionary process of the population in standard IECs.