Graphic Waveshaping

In the design of recent systems, I have advanced techniques that position graphic synthesis methods in the context of solo, improvisational performance. Here, the primary interfaces for musical action are prepared works on paper, scanned by digital video cameras which in turn pass image data on to software for analysis and interpretation as sound synthesis and signal processing procedures. The focus of this paper is on one of these techniques, a process I describe as graphic waveshaping. A discussion of graphic waveshaping in basic form and as utilized in my performance work, Impellent, is offered. In the latter case, the performer’s objective is to guide the interpretation of images as sound, constantly tuning and retuning the conversion while selecting and scanning images from a large catalog. Due to the erratic nature of the system and the precondition that image to sound relationships are unfixed, the performance situation is replete with the discovery of new sounds and the circumstances that bring them into play.