Bucolic: Cultural Machines Community-Based Human–AI–Robotic Musicianship with Traditional Instruments

Vasileios Agiomyrgianakis, Haruka Hirayama, Jussi Tuohino, and Osmo Hakosalo

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

Bucolic: Cultural Machines is a live performance emerging from an international collaboration among composers, performers, and researchers working with musical communities in Finland, Greece, and Japan. Developed in preparation for Oulu 2026, the European Capital of Culture, the work explores how new musical interfaces can engage with culturally situated practices and knowledge systems beyond academic and technological contexts. The performance is grounded in traditional instruments—the Finnish kantele, Greek goat bells, and Japanese shakuhachi—understood not only as sound-producing devices but as cultural mediators embedded in pastoral, animistic, and ecological worldviews. In these traditions, musical sound articulates relationships among humans, animals, landscapes, and spiritual entities. These community-rooted imaginaries inform both the compositional logic and interaction design of the performance. Rather than treating technology as a neutral or external layer, Bucolic: Cultural Machines integrates robotics, live coding, and artificial intelligence (AI) as active musical agents that coexist with human performers and acoustic instruments. Robotic goat bells and a servo-actuated kantele are controlled through live coding, enabling algorithmic manipulation of physical gesture while preserving the material and symbolic identities of the instruments. A shakuhachi performer engages through embodied breath and improvisation, negotiating musical outcomes with AI-driven sound processes trained on traditional instrument timbres. Musical agency in the performance is distributed across performers, machines, instruments, and spatial environments. Form emerges through interaction and listening rather than pre-determined structure, foregrounding relational and participatory modes of musicianship. Spatial audio using Higher-Order Ambisonics further extends this ecology, treating space and audience presence as integral components of the musical system and encouraging situated, embodied listening. Aligned with the NIME 2026 theme of Communities, this performance reflects on how NIME practices can learn from and contribute to geographically and culturally situated musical traditions. By fostering dialogue between folk knowledge, contemporary technology, and collaborative artistic practice, Bucolic: Cultural Machines proposes an inclusive model of new musical interfaces rooted in community, exchange, and shared authorship.

Citation

Vasileios Agiomyrgianakis, Haruka Hirayama, Jussi Tuohino, and Osmo Hakosalo. 2026. Bucolic: Cultural Machines Community-Based Human–AI–Robotic Musicianship with Traditional Instruments. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20782071 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_music_16,
 abstract = {Bucolic: Cultural Machines is a live performance emerging from an international collaboration among composers, performers, and researchers working with musical communities in Finland, Greece, and Japan. Developed in preparation for Oulu 2026, the European Capital of Culture, the work explores how new musical interfaces can engage with culturally situated practices and knowledge systems beyond academic and technological contexts. The performance is grounded in traditional instruments—the Finnish kantele, Greek goat bells, and Japanese shakuhachi—understood not only as sound-producing devices but as cultural mediators embedded in pastoral, animistic, and ecological worldviews. In these traditions, musical sound articulates relationships among humans, animals, landscapes, and spiritual entities. These community-rooted imaginaries inform both the compositional logic and interaction design of the performance. Rather than treating technology as a neutral or external layer, Bucolic: Cultural Machines integrates robotics, live coding, and artificial intelligence (AI) as active musical agents that coexist with human performers and acoustic instruments. Robotic goat bells and a servo-actuated kantele are controlled through live coding, enabling algorithmic manipulation of physical gesture while preserving the material and symbolic identities of the instruments. A shakuhachi performer engages through embodied breath and improvisation, negotiating musical outcomes with AI-driven sound processes trained on traditional instrument timbres. Musical agency in the performance is distributed across performers, machines, instruments, and spatial environments. Form emerges through interaction and listening rather than pre-determined structure, foregrounding relational and participatory modes of musicianship. Spatial audio using Higher-Order Ambisonics further extends this ecology, treating space and audience presence as integral components of the musical system and encouraging situated, embodied listening. Aligned with the NIME 2026 theme of Communities, this performance reflects on how NIME practices can learn from and contribute to geographically and culturally situated musical traditions. By fostering dialogue between folk knowledge, contemporary technology, and collaborative artistic practice, Bucolic: Cultural Machines proposes an inclusive model of new musical interfaces rooted in community, exchange, and shared authorship.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {16},
 author = {Vasileios Agiomyrgianakis and Haruka Hirayama and Jussi Tuohino and Osmo Hakosalo},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20782071},
 editor = {Lia Mice and Nicole Robson and Tara Pattenden},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {Live Performance},
 numpages = {4},
 pages = {64--67},
 presentation-video = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mWzXW7g5Zc},
 title = {Bucolic: Cultural Machines Community-Based Human–AI–Robotic Musicianship with Traditional Instruments},
 track = {Music},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_music_16.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}