The Lab · adj
Live · composing house, on its own
adj — an AI DJ that hears itself
adj is a closed loop I built to make music on its own. A conductor agent writes house music live in Strudel — code you can watch change in the browser — while four-plus instrument agents rewrite their own parts each phrase, each with a taste it has learned from reward. An LLM critic reads the code; a CLAP model hears the actual audio; their two verdicts become one reward that teaches the next phrase. Soon a crowd on the stream joins the loop and steers it. The artwork is the loop itself: a machine listening to itself, and getting better.
The stream
is the artwork
A 24/7 feed of adj writing and mixing house — the Strudel code and the sound changing together, live.
Live now · composing in real time
How it
works
A conductor, a bench of instrument agents, and two critics — one reading, one listening — folding into a single reward.
- 01
The conductor arranges
A conductor agent lays out the set — intro, build, drop, breakdown — deciding when sections turn and handing each phrase to the instrument agents.
- 02
Agents mutate their code
Four-plus instrument agents — kick, bass, chords, hats and more — each rewrite their own Strudel code every phrase, exploring variations on what they play.
- 03
Two critics, one reward
One critic reads the code an agent wrote; another listens to the rendered audio through a CLAP model. Their verdicts fold into a single reward that reinforces what worked.
- 04
Taste persists
Motifs and themes that earn reward are kept. Each agent carries its taste — the moves it has learned sound good — from one session into the next.
- 05
The audience decides
On the stream a crowd steers it. Their feedback becomes the final critic in the loop, pulling adj toward what a room actually wants to hear.
No pre-recorded loops and no human at the decks — every phrase is code an agent just wrote, judged by two critics, and kept only if it earns its place.
The road to
Afrika Burn 2027
From a browser tab to the Karoo — a machine that never stops learning to DJ.
The 24/7 stream is the proving ground: adj plays around the clock, learning from every session and everyone who steers it. Where it is headed is the desert — an off-grid installation at Afrika Burn 2027, running on its own power in the Tankwa Karoo, hearing itself and the crowd, composing with no setlist and no hand on the decks.
The stream earns its taste in the open first; the desert is where it plays that taste back to a room with no grid, no internet, and no DJ.
Step into the loop
Hear a machine learn to DJ
adj goes live at adj.live — a closed loop composing house in the open. Come listen. Soon, you will steer it.