ReImagining: Cross-cultural Co-Creation of a Chinese Traditional Musical Instrument with Digital Technologies

There are many studies of Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) design, but there is little research on the cross-cultural cocreation of DMIs drawing on traditional musical instruments. We present a study of cross-cultural co-creation inspired by the Duxianqin — a traditional Chinese Jing ethnic minority single stringed musical instrument. We report on how we structured the co-creation with European and Chinese participants ranging from DMI designers to composers and performers. We discuss how we identified the ‘essence’ of the Duxianqin and used this to drive co-creation of three Duxianqin reimagined through digital technologies. Music was specially composed for these reimagined Duxianqin and performed in public as the culmination of the design process. We reflect on our co-creation process and how others could use such an approach to identify the essence of traditional instruments and reimagine them in the digital age.