For his thesis, Mariano Salcedo built a modular, real-time, interactive music visualizer. Leaning into his undergraduate background studies at MIT, he used machine learning (specifically neural cellular automata) to let simple local rules grow into complex, ever-changing visuals that respond live to music.
Going forward, he is hoping to dig deeper into self-organization: basically, how complexity and order can emerge from many simple things interacting without anyone directing them from the top down.
Salcedo believes there’s a lot to explore in how that idea could shape new tools for music, art, and beyond.
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Seeing Sounds
Mariano Salcedo ’25, a master’s student in the new Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program, is designing an AI to visualize and express music and other sounds.
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 2026 Advanced Degree Ceremony
Master’s and doctoral degrees across multiple SHASS graduate programs were conferred during the ceremony.
Inaugural Music Technology Research Showcase celebrates work of new graduate program’s initial students
Associate Professor Anna Huang delivers the keynote address, “In Search of Human-AI Resonance,” to a capacity crowd.
Related People
Mariano Salcedo
SM '26
Eran Egozy
Professor of the Practice of Music
Director, Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program