Adaptivity is a dynamical feature that is omnipresent in nature, socio-economics, and technology. For example, adaptive couplings appear in various real-world systems, such as the power grid, social, and neural networks, and they form the backbone of closed-loop control strategies and machine learning algorithms. In this article, we provide an interdisciplinary perspective on adaptive systems. We reflect on the notion and terminology of adaptivity in different disciplines and discuss which role adaptivity plays for various fields. We highlight common open challenges and give perspectives on future research directions, looking to inspire interdisciplinary approaches.

Two recently built vihuelas, quasi-replicas of the Spanish Renaissance guitar, one with a small body and one sound hole and one with a large body with five sound holes, together with a classical guitar are investigated. Frequency dependent radiation strengths are measured using a 128 microphone array, back-propagating the frequency dependent sound field upon the body surface. All three instruments have a strong sound hole radiation within the low frequency range. Here the five tone holes vihuela has a much wider frequency region of strong sound hole radiation up to about 500 Hz, whereas the single hole instruments only have strong sound hole radiations up to about 300 Hz due to the enlarged radiation area of the sound holes. The strong broadband radiation of the five sound hole vihuela up to about 500 Hz is also caused by the sound hole phases, showing very consistent in-phase relations up to this frequency range. Also the radiation strength of the sound holes placed nearer to the center of the sound box are much stronger than those near the ribs, pointing to a strong position dependency of sound hole to radiation strength. The Helmholtz resonance frequency of the five sound hole vihuela is influenced by this difference in radiation strength but not by the rosettas, which only have a slight effect on the Helmholtz frequency.

A method for reconstructing a pressure field at the surface of a radiating body or source is presented using recording data of a microphone array. The radiation is assumed to consist of many spherical radiators, as microphone positions are present in the array. These monopoles are weighted using a parameter α , which broadens or narrows the overall radiation directivity as an effective and highly intuitive parameter of the radiation characteristics. A radiation matrix is built out of these weighted monopole radiators, and for different assumed values of α , a linear equation solver reconstructs the pressure field at the body’s surface. It appears that from these many arbitrary reconstructions, the correct one minimizes the reconstruction energy. The method is tested, localizing the radiation points of a Balinese sulingflute,reconstructing complex radiation from a duff frame drum, and determining the radiation directivity for the first seven modes of an Usbek tambourine. Stability in terms of measurement noise is demonstrated for the plain method, and additional highly effective algorithm is added for a noise level up to 0 dB. The stability of α in terms of minimal reconstruction energy is shown over the whole range of possible values for α . Additionally, the treatment of unwanted room reflections is discussed, still leading to satisfactory results in many cases.

A simple method is described to record the radiated sound of musical instruments and to extrapolate the sound field to distances further away from the source. This is achieved by considering instruments as complex point sources. It is demonstrated that this simplification method yields plausible results not only for small instruments like the shakuhachi but also for larger instruments such as the double bass: The amplitude decays in a given manner and calculated interaural signal differences reaching the listener decrease with increasing distance to the source. The method can be applied to analyze the sound radiation characteristics as well as the radiated sound field in a listening region regardless of room acoustical influences. Implementations in terms of room acoustical simulations, spatial additive synthesis and sound field synthesis are discussed.