The League of Automatic Music Composers, 1978-1983

A pioneering collective of experimentalists in San Francisco’s Bay Area during the late ’70s and early ’80s, The League of Automatic Music Composers were widely regarded as the first musicians to incorporate microcomputers into live performance, creating networks of interacting computers and other electronic circuits to elicit surprising new “musical artificial intelligences.”

They approached the computer network as one large, interactive musical instrument made up of independently programmed automatic machines, resulting in music that was noisy, difficult, often unpredictable, and occasionally beautiful.

The League’s work partook of the distinctive cultural atmosphere of the Bay Area in the ’70s and ’80s: a blend of communal ideologies, radical culture, technical innovation, intellectual ferment, and a hands-on attitude. For music, this meant redefining everything from instruments and tuning systems to forms, venues, and social relations among players and audiences.