Nodes, glitches and embedded algorithms: COMACROB and posthuman organology

Abstract In this article, Composing for Acoustic Robots (COMACROB) serves as a case study on the posthuman ontology of digital instruments. COMACROB is an instrumental system composed of live coding, AI-generated symbolic music and mechanically actuated acoustic instruments, such as the Yamaha Disklavier and MIDI pipe organ. The system challenges traditional distinctions between instrument, scoring and performance. The study borrows key notions from Thor Magnusson’s organology theory, presenting COMACROB as a layered system of inscriptions. It then attempts to delineate COMACROB’s speculative realism, drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as two complementary theoretical frameworks. ANT is employed to present how agency in COMACROB is distributed across a network of translating actions between human and nonhuman agents, whereas OOO places the focus of inquiry on the autonomy and resistance of the objects that constitute the system. At the core of the study lies the notion that algorithmic processes are not external control agents, but intrinsic functions that co-constitute the identity of the instrument. The article overall posits that COMACROB is a case of posthuman model of musical organology, according to which digital instruments are participant agents in the process of music authorship.