Evolving the Living Looper: Artistic Research, Online Learning, and Tentacle Pendula

Victor Shepardson, Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, and Thor Magnusson

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

The Living Looper is a neural audio synthesis looper system for live input. It combines online learning with pre-trained neural network models to resynthesize incoming audio into "living loops" that transform over time. This paper describes new features of the Living Looper and musician perspectives on its use. A new graphical interface facilitates use of the instrument by non-programmers and visualizes each loop to aid performers in tracking which loop is making which sound. We also describe a new living loop algorithm including incremental learning with partial least squares regression. Finally, we report on an artistic project using the Looper and lessons learned, resulting in an increased importance of training data and a developing sense of relationality.

Citation

Victor Shepardson, Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, and Thor Magnusson. 2025. Evolving the Living Looper: Artistic Research, Online Learning, and Tentacle Pendula. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15698851 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@article{nime2025_36,
 abstract = {The Living Looper is a neural audio synthesis looper system for live input. It combines online learning with pre-trained neural network models to resynthesize incoming audio into "living loops" that transform over time. This paper describes new features of the Living Looper and musician perspectives on its use. A new graphical interface facilitates use of the instrument by non-programmers and visualizes each loop to aid performers in tracking which loop is making which sound.  We also describe a new living loop algorithm including incremental learning with partial least squares regression. Finally, we report on an artistic project using the Looper and lessons learned, resulting in an increased importance of training data and a developing sense of relationality.},
 address = {Canberra, Australia},
 articleno = {36},
 author = {Victor Shepardson and Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir and Thor Magnusson},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15698851},
 editor = {Doga Cavdir and Florent Berthaut},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 numpages = {6},
 pages = {255--260},
 title = {Evolving the Living Looper: Artistic Research, Online Learning, and Tentacle Pendula},
 track = {Paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2025/nime2025_36.pdf},
 year = {2025}
}