At Rise of AI 2019 in Berlin, Marc Engenhart, head of design studio Engenhart, presents Symphonia Universalis (#SU), a man-machine art installation his six-to-eight-person team has spent nearly a year building for the Beethoven anniversary in Bonn in 2020. He traces the idea to visiting Beethoven's birthplace and reading Beethoven's character as visionary, humanist and boundary-expanding, which he treats as a template for an artificial persona. To build it, his team digitized Beethoven's full catalogue (Opus 1 through 138 plus roughly 90 unlabeled works) into MIDI data, engineered features describing his persona from letters and research, consulted a criminal profiler to draft a psychological profile translated into algorithms, modeled mood and crisis states such as his breakup, and fed all of it into a recurrent neural network alongside live human input he calls a "heartbeat." The result, installed as a black cube people can visit, touch and feel vibrate, continuously composes new music from public contributions worldwide, intended to run without updates or a defined end date.
Key takeaways
- Engenhart's team digitized Beethoven's full catalogue, Opus 1 through 138 plus about 90 unlabeled works, into MIDI data to train the system.
- A criminal profiler helped draft a psychological profile of Beethoven that Engenhart translated into algorithmic features.
- The system combines a trained Beethoven 'persona' with a live human 'heartbeat' input, since Engenhart says intuition cannot yet be modeled by machines.
- The installation, a black cube first set up in Bonn in 2020, is designed to run with no planned end date and no software updates.
- Engenhart chose Beethoven specifically for the 2020 anniversary of his 250th birthday rather than to clone or improve on his music.
Detailed notes
Origins: Beethoven's birthplace and the idea for #SU
Engenhart traces the project to a visit to Beethoven's family home in Bonn, where a sculpture and an architecturally distinct ceiling led him to think about consciousness and to see Beethoven, described in his research as a revolutionary, humanist, forward thinker, visionary and cosmopolitan nature lover, as resembling an artificial intelligence system in his own time. He decided to build a model combining coding, design and public participation for science, contemporary art, and the future of music.
Building a Beethoven persona from data
Engenhart says his first approach, to write an algorithm that composes like Beethoven, was a mistake, since similar AI-music projects already exist. Instead his team digitized Beethoven's entire written catalogue, Opus 1 through Opus 138 plus around 90 unlabeled compositions, into MIDI data, cleaning the handwritten source material (Partitur) to preserve musical expression and tempo accurately. On top of this MIDI dataset, they engineered features for a recurrent neural network representing Beethoven's persona, drawn from letters and research; consulted a criminal profiler to write a psychological profile that Engenhart translated into algorithms; and modeled situational and emotional states, including weather and an existential crisis modeled on Beethoven's breakup.
System design: persona, heartbeat and evolution
Engenhart describes the resulting system as combining a machine-learning "persona" layer trained on Beethoven's data and character with a human "heartbeat": live MIDI input from human intuition, since he says intuition itself cannot yet be modeled by machines. A public perception layer lets visitors sense the installation directly, and an "evolution" layer, the recurrent neural network, continuously collects intuitive musical ideas contributed by musicians worldwide via a website and recomposes them into new music.
The installation: a black cube in Bonn
The physical installation is a black cube, first set up in a museum in Bonn in 2020, combining visual, audio and touch (vibration) presentation. Engenhart plans to invite contributors from 150 nationalities to submit musical ideas online, which the system uses to compose live music continuously, with no planned end date or software updates; if the system ever produces only white noise, he treats that as a valid outcome of the research rather than a failure.
Q&A highlights
Asked why he chose Beethoven rather than another composer, Engenhart says Beethoven fit the 2020 anniversary (250 years since his birth) and Bonn's setting, and that the goal was never to clone Beethoven but to use him as a well-documented, recognizable teacher for the model. Asked whether digital, algorithmic composition suits classical music, he says the point is not to improve on Beethoven but to recreate the conditions for a musical revolution, and that the installation includes a touch interface precisely because pure listening is not the only intended experience. Asked about future engineering, he says the system also uses motion tracking, so that a crowded room of visitors can make it behave as "anxious," which the team will study by comparing recorded situations, such as many visitors present alongside intuition input arriving live from abroad.
Quotes
I want to create a model for science, for contemporary art, for the public to perceive, to get their hands on and understand, and for the future of music.
Marc Engenhart
The SU is a live composing intelligent machine.
Marc Engenhart
Every day, every second, worldwide, people can contribute to new music, that's the SU.
Marc Engenhart
Questions answered in this talk
What is Symphonia Universalis (#SU)?
According to Marc Engenhart at Rise of AI 2019, #SU is a man-machine art installation, a recurrent neural network trained on Beethoven's full musical catalogue and persona, combined with live human input, that continuously composes new music from contributions submitted by the public worldwide, first installed in Bonn in 2020.
Why did Marc Engenhart base his AI music project on Beethoven specifically?
Marc Engenhart said at Rise of AI 2019 that he chose Beethoven because the installation launched for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth in Bonn, and because Beethoven's well-documented life and letters provided rich data, not because the goal was to clone or improve his music.
Will the #SU system receive software updates after launch?
According to Marc Engenhart at Rise of AI 2019, #SU is designed to run indefinitely with no planned end date and no updates, since it is a research and art installation meant to observe what happens over time, not a product meant to keep improving.