Tölvera is a Python library designed for composing together and interacting with basal agencies, inspired by fields such as artificial life (ALife) and self-organising systems. It provides creative coding-style APIs that allow users to combine and compose various built-in behaviours, such as flocking, slime mold growth, and swarming, and also author their own. With built-in support for Open Sound Control (OSC) via iipyper and interactive machine learning (IML) via anguilla, Tölvera interfaces with and rapidly maps onto existing creative computing software and hardware, striving to be both an accessible and powerful tool for exploring diverse intelligence in artistic contexts.

The word Tölvera is an Icelandic kenning based on tölva meaning computer, from tala (number) and völva (prophetess), and vera (being), composed together as number being.

For more, visit the Tölvera website and join the Discord server.

References

• Tölvera: Composing With Basal Agencies. Jack Armitage, Victor Shepardson & Thor Magnusson. Proc. New Interfaces for Musical Expression 2024 (NIME 2024), Utrecht, Netherlands. [pdf]
• Commingling Artificial Life and Interactive Machine Learning in Diffractive Artistic Research Practice. Jack Armitage, Victor Shepardson, Miguel Crozzoli & Thor Magnusson. Proc. Conference on Artificial Life 2024 (ALIFE 2024), Copenhagen, Denmark. [pdf]
• Artificial Life in Integrated Interactive Sonification and Visualisation: Initial Experiments with a Python-Based Workflow. Jack Armitage, Miguel Crozzoli & Daniel Jones. Proc. International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2024), Troy, NY, USA. [pdf]
• Explainable AI in Music Performance: Case Studies from Live Coding & Sound Spatialisation. Celeste Betancur, Jack Armitage, Victor Shepardson & Nicola Privato. XAI in Action: Past, Present, and Future Applications, NeurIPS 2023 Workshop, New Orleans, USA. [pdf]
• Sardine: a Modular Python Live Coding Environment. Raphaël Maurice Forment & Jack Armitage. 7th International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC2023), Utrecht, Netherlands. [pdf]
• Agential Scores: Exploring Emergent, Self-Organising and Entangled Music Notation, Jack Armitage and Thor Magnusson, 8th International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR) 2023, May 16 20223, Northeastern University, Cambridge, MA. [pdf]