Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

This paper examines musical practices developed within an international collaborative project involving Finland, Greece, and Japan undertaken in preparation for a performance in Oulu, the European Capital of Culture 2026. Folk instruments—including the Finnish kantele, the Greek goat bells, and the Japanese shakuhachi—are approached not merely as sources of sound, but as cultural devices that mediate relationships between humans, nature, living beings, and spiritual entities. The project takes such folk imaginaries as the foundation for compositional and performance design. Furthermore, rather than treating technology as a neutral means, this study characterizes artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms as active agents that participate in performance situations. That is, focusing on practices in which humans, AI, robotics, algorithms, and spatial environments intersect, the paper investigates how conventional concepts of performance and musical agency are expanded and reconfigured. Through performances situated in diverse spatial contexts, it examines the relationships between soundscape and performance space, as well as between performers and listeners, elucidating participatory and distributed forms of agency in contemporary performance.

The project is grounded in collaboration among composers, performers, and researchers from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, and explores hybrid performance ecologies involving humans, machines, and environments. Through analysis of these practices, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions in musicology, sound studies, and artistic research concerning technologically mediated performance, posthuman musical agency, and spatialized listening.