Music of Changing Lines: Toward a Culturally Situated Approach to the I-Ching
For researchers in computer music and AI, this work offers a culturally situated approach to generative music that prioritizes human agency and interpretation over autonomous composition.
The paper presents an interactive system that re-centers the I-Ching as a meaning-bearing framework for generative music, using AI as an interpretive intermediary rather than a compositional authority. The system integrates coin casting, LLM-based interpretation, and generative music to support participatory, meaning-driven musical processes.
The I-Ching is one of the most influential texts in Chinese intellectual history, integrating divination, cosmology, and ethical reflection. While Western experimental music, most notably John Cage, has drawn on the I-Ching as a source of chance operation, such appropriations have often detached its formal mechanisms from the interpretive and philosophical processes that give the text meaning. This work, Music of Changing Lines, presents an interactive system that re-centers the I-Ching as a meaning-bearing framework rather than a neutral randomizer. Users perform Wen Wang Fa coin casting, which is accompanied in real time through probabilistic musical processes. The resulting hexagrams and changing lines are interpreted by a large language model, Gemini, in relation to the user's inquiry. This textual interpretation is then translated into a prompt for a generative music model, Lyria, producing a responsive musical realization. By situating AI as an interpretive intermediary rather than a compositional authority, the system foregrounds the I-Ching's ritual, interpretation, and participation as the primary sonic materials. Music of Changing Lines extends process-driven traditions in computer music by demonstrating how generative AI can support participatory, meaning-driven musical processes without prescribing musical structure or replacing human agency.