Lagu Hantu: Creating computationally-mediated ensembles across time

Anastasha Rachel Gunawan, and Matthew Caren

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

Lagu Hantu is a large-scale interactive instrument inspired by the Indonesian gamelan tradition, which invites people to create sound in collaboration with both each other and past participants by using distributed tactile interfaces. When the instrument is played, a program summons fragments of past participants' performances by recalling how people accompanied similar gestures in the past. We describe the design and technical implementation of the instrument, the underlying system that allows users to collaborate across time, and the instrument's use in a public installation.

Citation

Anastasha Rachel Gunawan, and Matthew Caren. 2026. Lagu Hantu: Creating computationally-mediated ensembles across time. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784407 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_131,
 abstract = {Lagu Hantu is a large-scale interactive instrument inspired by the Indonesian gamelan tradition, which invites people to create sound in collaboration with both each other and past participants by using distributed tactile interfaces. When the instrument is played, a program summons fragments of past participants' performances by recalling how people accompanied similar gestures in the past. We describe the design and technical implementation of the instrument, the underlying system that allows users to collaborate across time, and the instrument's use in a public installation.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {131},
 author = {Anastasha Rachel Gunawan and Matthew Caren},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20784407},
 editor = {Benedict Gaster and João Tragtenberg and Anna Xambó and Tom Mitchell},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {},
 numpages = {6},
 pages = {1067--1072},
 title = {Lagu Hantu: Creating computationally-mediated ensembles across time},
 track = {paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_131.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}