Mimi is a performer-centric tool designed for use in performance and teaching. Its key and novel component is its visual interface, designed to provide the performer with instantaneous and continuous information on the state of the system. For human improvisation, in which context and planning are paramount, the relevant state of the system extends to the near future and recent past.

The Mimi system, designed and implemented using the SAI framework, successfully integrates symbolic computations and real-time synchronization in a multi-modal interactive setting.

Mimi's visual interface allows for a peculiar blend of raw reflex typically associated with improvisation, and preparation and timing more closely affiliated with score-based reading. Mimi is not only an effective improvisation partner, it has also proven itself to be an invaluable platform through which to interrogate the mental models necessary for successful improvisation.

In her approach to improvisation, Mimi takes after her older brother OMax.

Photo: MIMI at the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum, with the Seiler Grand Piano, the first MIDI grand piano produced in the 1950s for TV production, May 19, 2007. Photo by E. Chew.