A Computational System for Violin: Synthesis and Dissolution in Windowless

Abstract

This article provides an overview of a real-time, hybrid computational system for the violin, Windowless. The system uses a custom sensor glove, the alto.glove, to track the violinist’s movements and drive a panoply of unique digital sound processing effects. The author describes the operations of the system in terms of a broad notion of synthesis, consis-tency, microintervallic motions and molecular operations. A threefold approach combining dense sonic physics, “loose” computational procedures and high system responsiveness creates a rich and thick performative medium with a vapor-like, particulate level of textural and bitwise computational detail.

xCoAx 2021: Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X

“…(Grosz 2008, 14) My vibrotactile shoulder rest is just such a way to wrench consistency from chaotic forces, from the heterogeneity at the machinic intersection, which in the nascence of real-time composed digital instruments just a few decades ago lacked the suppleness affording a more convincing integration, a surface that one could grip. The struggle with digital musical instruments is a struggle for a fine-grained, "molecular" consistency (Thorn 2019), but consistency should not be mistaken for unity, that is, for an utter flattening that would dissolve heterogeneity and thereby lose the material and conceptual resistance critical to musical production (Evens 2004, 160-73). 5 The shrinking interval between musical conception and realization-catching up to the action-perception substratum, where it brings symmetry and consistency-constitutes progress.…”

Chaconne (2020) for Violin

“…The violin, the quintessential western stringed instrument, is reinvented-in fact, this extremely versatile instrument and has always been prone to it, as Dan Trueman has said. 1 The performance is a rendition of Bach's paradigmatic solo violin work, Chaconne.…”

“…Ableton Live is used for this performance, employing a variety of custom Max for Live devices. More extended and detailed descriptions of the system as it has evolved through the last several years are available in several publications [1][2].…”