Keynote / 2026

Sound, Systems,
and Computational
Imagination.

Why am I speaking about this?

I am an Indonesian-born composer
who became a maker of systems.

A trajectory, not a CV

Codarts → IRCAM → Melbourne → Goldsmiths → RMIT.

Not as self-claim — as context

A handful of verifiable footholds.

Material #1

Sound as material,
not just signal.

Material #2

Image as computed behaviour,
not surface.

Material #3

Body, gesture, myth —
and now intelligence.

After Michel Chion

Sound does not just accompany image.

• Sound can transform what an image appears to mean.
• Meaning emerges between perception, image, sound, and context.
• The audiovisual contract is productive, not additive.

My extension

Meaning emerges when sound, image,
and text reorganise each other.

Current paper

Intermediality Beyond Synchronisation:
Text as a Compositional Agent in Electroacoustic Audiovisual Performance.

Case study 01

Ciung Wanara.
Interactive audiovisual composition.

• Foundation from my PhD research.
• Inspired by Indonesian shadow puppet battle.
• Rooster avatars respond to performer gesture.
• Composing not material, but behaviour.

In performance · AIMC 2024, Oxford

Case study 02

Hutan Plastik.
Forest, plastic, electroacoustic listening.

From the work

Key idea

Electroacoustic listening,
visual imagination,
ecological anxiety — held together.

Case study 03

F2.
Text as a compositional agent.

• Sound, image, and text do not need to be synchronised in the conventional sense.
• Text shapes perception, memory, narrative tension.
• Connected to my current Organised Sound manuscript.

Case study 04 · with Wing Hei Cheryl Hui

Peripersonal Modular Interfaces.
Accessible Digital Musical Instruments for care ecologies.

• NIME 2026 · London — paper.
• Wireless sensing tiles · TPU lattice + Hall-effect.
• Decoupled sensing from surface: tunable compliance, hygienic, robust.
• Co-designed with a London community music charity (N = 12).

One sensing tile

Key result

End-to-end haptic–audio latency:
≈ 7 ms average, < 12 ms max.

---

Each tile is an independent network node — reconfigurable across tabletops, wheelchair trays, or floors. The instrument is wherever the ensemble decides it should be.

Six active threads · 2026

06A · with Shuang Li

Gorgon Loop.

• SIGGRAPH 2026 Art Papers — camera-ready submitted.
• Algorithmic judgement & smart mirrors.
• Collective social behaviour as installation.
• Machine vision + generative language revealing how systems classify us.

forthcoming · SIGGRAPH 2026 · Los Angeles · 19–23 Jul

06B · with Fioretta Zhang

Onycho Lab.

• ACM Creativity & Cognition 2026 — demo paper.
• Wearable fingertip prostheses.
• Feminist hapticism · artificial nails as bodily technology.
• Touch, ornament, and labour re-framed through a clinic-style ritual.

conditionally accepted · in final submission

06C · with Federico (Fede)

Linea Viva.

[TODO · placeholder — awaiting Fede's draft.]

accepted · ACM C&C 2026

URL forthcoming

06E · with Christian Berg + Bin Youn

tricity-flux.xyz.

Triangulating urban change through pixel-to-particle translation: a triangular prism installation exploring Ho Chi Minh City through point cloud aesthetics and particle simulation.

submitted · Ars Electronica Expanded 2026

→ tricity-flux.xyz

06F · with Zhiqi Wang

Mycortex.
Non-human symbolic communication through art and bioelectric signals.

An interactive installation juxtaposing fungal electrical signals with human brainwaves — transforming both into non-narrative language and symbols. A “third space” for interspecies translation, non-anthropocentric, posthuman.

ARTECH 2025 · Braga, Portugal

06G · open-source · MIT

TDYolo.
Real-time YOLO object detection inside TouchDesigner — no Python required.

A drop-in .tox component that runs YOLOv11 inside an embedded headless browser — inference via WebGPU (WASM fallback), zero Python environment, zero pip install. Real-time bounding boxes and class labels flow straight into the TouchDesigner node graph.

open-source · MIT · 74★

→ github.com/patrickhartono/TDYolo

A long tradition continued

Coming from computer music, AI did not feel like a rupture.
It felt like an extension.

Using unfamiliar systems, non-conventional methods, algorithms, randomness, synthesis, and computation to move beyond conventional musical thinking — that is exactly what electroacoustic practice has always done.

But — and it is a serious but

The danger is not only ethical.
It is cognitive and artistic.

When everything becomes possible,
direction becomes harder.

The shift

The question is no longer how to use the tools.
It is how to filter, judge, select, direct.

Why both halves matter

The artist of the AI era
must be a thinker-doer.

The future belongs to people who can think through making.

I am not pretending to be an expert

For artists, quantum is not only about speed.

The shape of the gap

Talent is here. The system around it is still being built.

A delicate point

Scholarships are opportunities,
not end-states.

A careful note

A healthy ecosystem
does not cut down expertise.

All sources referenced in this deck