Embedded intelligent music–or iHiFi the intelligent HiFi

One consequence of current technological advances is that we can imbue everyday objects such as our fridges, ovens, fires, doors, thermostats, tvs and stereos with processing power. Not only will this enable them to make decisions based on their current state and model of the world about their current behaviour (the oven may automatically turn itself off when there is an excess of smoke) it will also allow communication with others to make decisions (the fridge may choose to defrost some vegetables when the phone communicates that there is a recent message from a friend who is, unexpectedly, intending to show for some dinner). This leads to the notion of ambient intelligence where intelligent computational entities are interwoven into the very fabric of our lives. We envisage a scenario where music devices cannot only make intelligent, sympathetic decisions about sound generation in order to satiate the particular sound requirements of a user, but would also interact with other devices both musical and otherwise in a massively dynamic and unpredictable environment. We also envisage that there will be a massive shift in the pattern of behaviour relating to music consumption; a move from the passive consumer to the active creator. The emerging field of computer science which is concerned with building systems which are inherently distributed, dynamic, open and social in this sense is known as intelligent agents. Whilst we are quite clear that we are in the very early tentative stages of this work, we nevertheless set out some realistic medium-term achievable functionalities for what we call intelligent embedded music, where intelligent, interactive music generation could continually and dynamically surround and sustain our day to day existence. We call this the intelligent HiFi (iHiFi)