APAF 2026 · Artistic IntelligenceSymposium · Faculty of Performing Arts
ISI Yogyakarta · 23 June 2026
Embodied Research
When the work decides the discipline.
Dr. Patrick Hartono
Lecturer in Digital Media · RMIT University Vietnam
About
A short introduction
Dr. Patrick Hartono — electroacoustic composer, audiovisual artist & researcher.
Lecturer in Digital Media — School of Communication & Design, RMIT University Vietnam
PhD (Interactive Composition), University of Melbourne
Editorial Board, Journal for Artistic Research (JAR)
Board member, International Computer Music Association · research in Organised Sound & Computer Music Journal
One practice, many disciplines
My practice sits at the centre. Every discipline around it is something the work reached for — not a box it lives in.
The theme, re-read
Two kinds of intelligence
Machine
Counts, predicts, optimises.
Knows the world by measuring it. Powerful — but it reduces what it cannot count.
vs
Embodied
Senses, makes, knows.
Knowledge that lives in practice — in the body, the ear, the hand. It can't be fully said, only enacted.
"Bodies and sound always find new ways to speak to their era."
The Idea
"Research is research; it goes anywhere — it depends on the objective and the idea."
— heard from Prof. Marko Ciciliani, over many conversations since ~2015, including in Yogyakarta.
Embodied Research is not a method. It is a stance: research is not preparation for the work — it follows the objective and the idea, and enters whatever discipline the work demands.
This is not a talk about AI.
ReferencesCiciliani, "Music in the Expanded Field" (Darmstadt, 2016) · Nelson, Practice as Research in the Arts (and Beyond), 2nd ed. (Palgrave, 2022) · Lüneburg, "Knowledge Production in Artistic Research," Music & Practice (2023) · Schwab, "Expositionality" (2019).
How I'll show it
Three of my own works — three territories
Not an argument in the abstract. Three research projects, each begun from an idea and pulled into a different field. Watch where the discipline comes from.
PapuaEthnography / pedagogy
→
IntermedialityMedia & perception theory
→
Jakarta WitnessComputing / ML
Outputs span a journal article, a performance, and an interactive artwork.
ReferencesVear (ed.), The Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research (2022) · de Assis & D'Errico (eds.), Artistic Research: Charting a Field in Expansion (2019).
01
Case 01 · into ethnography
Soundwalk fieldwork with students — Soundscapes of Papua.
Soundscapes of Papua
Organised Sound 30(1), 2025 · Hartono, Sutanto & Nanlohy
- A culturally fitting pedagogy forced the work into ethnography: interviews, critical listening, soundwalk.
- The method emerged from the cultural encounter — it could not be imposed up front.
- Embodied investigation (listening, fieldwork) → research (a transmissible framework + article).
ScaffoldingKallio, "Decolonizing music education research…" RSME (2020) · Robinson, Hungry Listening (Minnesota UP, 2020) · Westerkamp, "Soundwalking" (2022) · Rakena et al., Decolonising & Indigenising Music Education (Routledge, 2024).
02
Case 02 · into media & perception theory
The triangular added-value model — text mediates sound and image (F2).
Intermediality Beyond Synchronisation
Organised Sound 31(3), thematic issue “Electroacoustic Audiovisual Composition & Intermediality” — Dec 2026 · case study: F2
- Sound, image and text deliberately unsynchronised — text becomes the compositional agent.
- The objective pulled the work into film-sound & perception theory (Chion's added value) + a qualitative audience study.
- It produced a new model — and a dual output: a journal article and the performance.
ScaffoldingChion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, 2nd ed. (Columbia UP, 2019) · Zareei, "Audiovisual Materialism," Organised Sound 25(3) (2020) · Chiaramonte, Intermedial Interference… (PhD, Bournemouth, 2024).
02
Case 02 · F2 in performance
F2 in performance — electroacoustic sound, procedural visuals and projected/spoken text, deliberately unsynchronised. The text draws on the May 1998 violence in Indonesia.
03
Case 03 · into computing / ML
A live frame — the detector names the street; the model proposes a “solution”; the city flattens.
Jakarta Witness
Art Paper, SIGGRAPH Asia (ACM Digital Library) · real-time, browser-native artwork (2026)
- Staging machine cognition pulled the work fully into computing — YOLOv8 + Qwen 2.5, WebGPU, Transformers.js.
- Output is an interactive artwork, not a paper — the artwork is the knowledge.
- Here the machine's "intelligence" reduces the city — the mirror-image of embodied intelligence.
Live · jakarta-witness.com
ScaffoldingPereira & Moreschi, "AI & Institutional Critique 2.0," AI & Society (2021) · Robillard & Nika, "Critical Climate Machine," SIGGRAPH 2024 (Best Art Paper) · Sivertsen et al., CHI '24 · Mattern, A City Is Not a Computer (Princeton UP, 2021).
What the three show
Dissolving the boxes
Ethnographyinterviews, listening
→
Media theoryChion, audience study
→
ComputingML, interactive code
Not one began from "which discipline is this?" — every one began from the objective and the idea.
The science / art boxes don't dissolve because we erase them. They dissolve because the practice never cared about them.
ReferencesBorgdorff, Peters & Pinch (eds.), Dialogues Between Artistic Research and STS (Routledge, 2019) · Ito, "Design and Science" — the antidisciplinary "white space" (JoDS, MIT, 2016).
Back to the theme
Artistic Intelligence is embodied intelligence
A machine's intelligence is what can be counted. An artist's intelligence is situated, cross-disciplinary, and irreducible — it knows the city, the body, the sound from the inside.
- It does not pick a discipline first — it follows the idea.
- It produces knowledge that cannot be flattened into data.
- This is the intelligence this symposium is really about.
"I let the work choose its discipline — and report honestly the order in which I came to know."
Research is research. It goes where the idea leads.
Discussion
Terima kasih · Questions & conversation
Selected referencesNelson (2022) · Vear ed. (2022) · Schwab (2019) · Lüneburg (2023) · Hartono, Sutanto & Nanlohy (2025) · Kallio (2020) · Robinson (2020) · Chion (2019) · Zareei (2020) · Chiaramonte (2024) · Pereira & Moreschi (2021) · Robillard & Nika (2024) · Sivertsen et al. (2024) · Mattern (2021) · Borgdorff, Peters & Pinch eds. (2019) · Ito (2016).
