Diasporic Instrument Ecology: Reworlding Sound
Tamara Yadao
Abstract
As systems thinking increasingly engages frameworks of complexity, relationality, and co-creation, this proposal introduces Diasporic Instrument Ecology (DIE) as a framework for examining systems structured by diasporic conditions of displacement, understood not as geographic dislocation but as a mode of relation operating across temporal, material, performative, and relational dimensions.
Through a case study pairing a Nintendo Game Boy (DMG-01) with a sarunay (Filipino metallophone gong), this article examines a structurally diasporic system in which persistent difference is not an obstacle to co-creation but a condition that generates emergent sonic behaviors. By reorienting systems thinking beyond models grounded primarily in control and optimization, DIE proposes a relational architecture in which difference is not treated as a deviation to be resolved, but as a generative condition through which sonic relations emerge and the distribution of agency within the system continually shifts.
Paper Description Final tk
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Author Bio
Tamara Yadao is a Filipino-American composer, musician, and interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores experimental sound, repurposed technologies, and adaptive approaches to composition. Through her chip music project Corset Lore and game art duo foci + loci, she investigates alternative relationships between obsolete technologies, sonic systems, and creative processes.
Her current research in Philippine ethnomusicology at the University of the Philippines Diliman, supported by an Asian Cultural Council fellowship and focused in part on the work of Filipino composer and ethnomusicologist José Maceda, informs her ongoing inquiry into sound, relational systems, and emergent sonic practices.