Performative transactions: worlding compositional ecosystems

This artistic research doctorate by a music composer investigates how emerging technologies—especially artificial intelligence and blockchain—transform artistic roles and compositional practices. Combining compositional experimentation, philosophical inquiry, and the creation of the course Posthuman Creativity Labs: Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain in Music, the research redefined four artistic roles: artists as operators, curators, system-builders, and worlders of artistic ecosystems. Each role introduced new compositional methods explored through theory and practice. Addressing the need for ecosystems where human and non-human agents can build transparently on one another’s work, the project employed creative prototyping, speculative design, and iterative development to imagine and construct such a system. It proposed the Autopoietic Rhizomatic Metamodelling Machine (ARMM) as a conceptual framework, later realised as Decentralised Creative Networks (DCNs)—blockchain-based environments where humans and AI co-compose generative, self-modifying musical structures within a mode termed allagmatic composition. At their core are Performative Transactions (PTs): modular, executable contributions that encode and transform compositional processes. Through both analysis and artistic creation, the thesis establishes a model of posthuman composition founded on procedural transparency, recursive design, and decentralised collaboration.