As part of the international conference “Is Generative AI Creative? A Scientific and Philosophical Perspective on the Issue”, a lecture-concert open to the public will take place on the evening of Thursday, July 3, 2025, at 9:00 PM in the gardens of the Sartorio Museum (in case of rain, the event will be held in the Luttazzi Hall). The event will focus on the topic of artificial generation in the field of music.
This initiative is part of the “Trieste Estate” festival, directed by Gabriele Centis, and is made possible through collaboration with the Center for Computational Sonology at the University of Padua.
The event’s centerpiece will be the Disklavier, an acoustic piano equipped with sensors and electronic actuators that allow its keys and pedals to move autonomously, reproducing performances remotely controlled via MIDI files. The choice of this instrument — made possible through collaboration with Yamaha Corporation — stems from the desire to enable artificial intelligence to “play” a piano directly, without human mediation: as if giving it its own “musical body.”
The evening will alternate between explanatory segments, presented by Prof. Sergio Canazza, and listening sessions featuring AI-generated pieces, thanks to the contribution of researcher Alessandro Fiordelmondo, an expert in Live Electronics.
To further explore the relationship between composer and artificial intelligence, composer Ardavan Vossoughi was commissioned to compose ten original études for the Disklavier. These pieces were used to create a dataset on which a neural network was trained to generate a new composition.
The audience will thus have the opportunity to hear both the original version created by the AI and a reinterpretation of the piece arranged by Vossoughi himself.
This project is accompanied by a research initiative dedicated to the Disklavier, the construction of the dataset, and experimentation with various artificial intelligence models. All of this is framed by a philosophical reflection on the nature of works generated by neural networks and the role of the composer in dialogue with the machine.
📌 Practical Information
When: Thursday, July 3, 2025, at 9:00 PM Where: Gardens of the Sartorio Museum (in case of rain: Sala Luttazzi) Language: Italian, with simultaneous translation in English
Admission: Free
