Integrating generative AI and blockchain technologies to create musical objects with agency

In recent years, increased access to sophisticated tools in the domains of artificial intelligence (AI) and decentralized computation (in particular blockchain-enabled technologies) is leading to significant developments in the landscape of digital art. In the creative experiments of artists, designers, and technologists, such developments are evident, for example, in a focus on generative processes (e.g., AI-enabled text-to-image generation) and on the production of unique digital artifacts (such as blockchain-enabled non-fungible tokens, or NFTs). For now, the bulk of creative experimentation and theoretical reflection appears to have taken place in an occularcentric mode, and with a primary focus on visual, non-time-based artforms. Drawing on this existing discourse, in this chapter I will begin to explore some opportunities that emerging AI and blockchain technologies represent for new compositional practices, performance, collaboration, and distribution of music and sound-based aesthetic artifacts. Throughout this discussion, the underlying focus is on the shifting contours of creative agency effected by AI and blockchain technologies. With this focus in mind, key concerns include the following: How can creative agency be encoded in AI-augmented and blockchain-enabled musical objects? What are the implications of this ‘becoming-agential’ for questions related to authorship and ownership? It will not be possible to provide conclusive answers to these questions here. Instead, my aim in this chapter is to stake the relevance and importance of the questions raised by outlining underlying concerns and perspectives. In the following sections, this is done first by offering detailed contextualization, and subsequently by discussing an ongoing multimodal art project that is of great relevance to the concerns outlined above.