Emory Smith — CalArts Creative Computing
PAPER 1
In submission — ROTURA, Process Report
Abstract
The parallel maturation of single-board computers, microcontrollers, audio-visual programming languages, fabrication techniques, and access to information has created an environment where form emerges as a coherent system rather than in sequential layers. This convergence enables individuals to rapidly develop self-contained interfaces where gesture, sound, graphics, and physical structure are implemented as direct extensions of artistic intention. This paper presents two case studies demonstrating this methodology: NEPTR, a handheld performance instrument with dense sensor input and synchronized audiovisual feedback, along with BOUBA, a quadraphonic tactile sound object designed for therapeutic ambient synthesis.
Summary
The paper that states the season's argument out loud: the traditional sequence of digital instrument-making has collapsed into a single iterative act one practitioner can hold in their head. Both prototypes were completed in under four months combined, for under $300 combined, without institutional resources or commercial software — which is the evidence, not a disclaimer. Submitted to ROTURA: Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Artes, special dossier on Advances in Digital and Interactive Arts. Double-blind review.
PAPER 2
Instrument running — paper in progress
Abstract
NEPTR is the brain at the center of the performance system, linking audio interfaces, DIY controllers, and hyper-instruments with internal DSP and a graphical interface. It replaces the laptop, the synthesizer, and the pedalboard onstage. This paper documents the system as a whole rather than the box alone: the operating layer beneath it, the effect architecture inside it, and the family of DIY satellites around it.
Summary
Csound on a Raspberry Pi 5 at 48 kHz with a 128-sample period — 6 ms from string to amplifier. 63 effect modules across 20 menus, every one hand-written, from circuit-modeled drive stages to granular and spectral processors to a Neural Amp Modeler stage on the custom NAMProcess opcode. A Python touchscreen UI mirrored over OSC, with a consistency test suite that fails the build if the UI, the MIDI handler, and the reference documentation ever disagree. Underneath it all, the Rust DEMIURGE supervisor — the OS work and the instrument work are the same work from opposite ends.
PAPER 3
Mid-build — first encoder working on hardware
Abstract
NeuralGrid is a sensor-dense physical controller whose models speak a symbolic vocabulary before they speak sound. Pads, ribbons, lidar, and contact microphones are smoothed and interpolated into a coherent output format defined by the dimensional space the sensors represent. A first model interprets gesture through a symbolic vocabulary borrowed from tabla; a second translates that stream onto any synthesis engine through seven perceptual axes. Parameter mapping across OSC and MIDI lets the same stream drive complex interfaces and mechanical instruments, including the Machine Lab.
Summary
The design turns on tabla. Bols are a spoken vocabulary of strokes; theka holds a cycle; tihai and kaida act as geometric transforms over stroke sequences — a complete, tested grammar for playing, combining, and varying phrases that happens to be symbolic and speakable by construction. The translator that follows is deaf: it never hears what it renders, which keeps model latency structurally outside the audio path. Hardcoded regions of its behavior define specific instruments; loosening them lets the instrument be generatively shaped by the translator's reactions to the player.
PAPER 4
Running today — paper in progress
Abstract
DemiurgeOS is a flashable, audio-first operating system for the Raspberry Pi 5 — a modern successor to Stanford CCRMA's Satellite. Every major audio language ships pre-installed and pre-wired, routed through a unified PipeWire abstraction and tempo-locked to a global clock. Programs never see hardware: everything routes through one virtual sink and one shared MIDI bus, so hot-plug is invisible and a second interface aggregates automatically. The whole system is driven from one hot-reloaded config file.
Summary
Born from watching a class full of people fight their Pis. A zero-dependency Rust launcher parses one file into a patch graph, links audio and MIDI, and hot-reloads on save — untouched stages keep their PIDs, dead ones are routed around. A C++ clock daemon fans MIDI realtime at 24 PPQN with optional Ableton Link. A Teensy plugged into the Pi reflashes over SSH with no button press. Seven languages verified bidirectionally on an isolated core at quantum 128 without xruns. OMNIPLEX, the unified transport, is being folded in as a feature rather than shipped separately.
PAPER 5
In development — CalArts
Working position
The traditional sequence of digital instrument-making — specify, then program, then fabricate, then perform — has collapsed into a single iterative act that one practitioner can hold entirely in their head. The thesis takes the further-meta position on that collapse: not here is an instrument, and not here is how instruments get made, but what it means that the distance between wanting an instrument and having one has become this short, and what that does to the instruments themselves.
Summary
Binds the three papers above. Demiurge exists because the instrument needed it; the instrument is one of the two case studies that made the methodology arguable; the methodology is what the other two mean when read together. Each paper alone is a system description — the thesis is the argument they add up to. Retrospective is what has already been built; prospectus is what is being argued. Chaptered by the papers, written in the first person as practice-based research.
PAPER 6 — 2027+
Complete and submitted — venue deferred to 2027
Abstract
Neural Amp Modeler is the most widely used open-source system for black-box modeling of nonlinear audio hardware using neural networks. A community library of several hundred thousand pre-trained captures exists, but there has been no way to use them inside Csound. This paper presents NAMProcess, a Csound opcode performing real-time NAM inference: it loads standard .nam files, switches between models without interrupting audio, adds no algorithmic latency, and runs comfortably in real time on a Raspberry Pi. A live dry-referenced volume compensation system holds every capture in a heterogeneous 25-model test library within ±2 dB of the player's volume.
Summary
The genuinely new part is the compensation. Fed the same signal, 25 community captures span 17.3 dB even after a normalization probe, and saturating models compress, so no static per-model gain can equalize them. Metering dry against wet with ITU-R BS.1770 K-weighting and riding a slow trim on the ratio collapses that spread to 3.6 dB, all but one capture inside ±2 dB. Ships three ways: the raw opcode, a drag-and-drop Cabbage VST3/AU plugin, and tone selection in the Pi pedal. Opcode source, build files, and measurement tooling are downloadable from the paper page.
PAPER 7 — 2027+
Built — second prototype and web version in progress
Abstract
BOUBA is a quadraphonic sound object providing tactile interaction with therapeutic generative synthesis. Designed for the non-musician seeking a psychologically beneficial relationship with sound, it targets four pillars of human experience: sleep, mood, productivity, and autonomic regulation. Its physical controls and self-contained state foster an intimate relationship with the user, grounded in empirical research linking ambient consonance, rhythmic entrainment, and generative soundscapes to measurable physiological and psychological benefit.
Summary
Built and in consistent use. Teensy Audio Library, four speakers from two PCM5102 DACs through four LM386 amplifiers, powered from a 9 V jack, roughly $80 USD to reproduce, no connections but power. Active work is a second hardware prototype designed for accessibility and sound quality, plus a free web version running the same generative system — which together make possible a comparison between how people relate to a physical sound object and to the identical system in a browser. The contribution offered is the interface, not a health outcome: a tangible-interface paper for TEI or DIS, not a clinical venue. No claim of clinical efficacy is made.
PAPER 8 — 2027+
Deferred — transport folding into DemiurgeOS
Abstract
Adapters and converters are widely used when a single USB-C cable would be more efficient. The goal is a unified system for streaming multiple forms of data over common cables like USB-A/B/C and Ethernet, while interfacing with one's machine in a way that allows for maximum accessibility of data being transferred and received. Through an intuitive UI and backend, multiple devices can be networked to stream a high bandwidth of audio, visual and control data at extremely low latency.
Summary
Every device on a modern stage carries a USB-C port, and signal still routes through audio interfaces and capture cards — rounds of unnecessary conversion between machines that are each already digital. Devices negotiate roles on the link rather than having them fixed by whichever box owns the capture hardware, virtual drivers present each stream to the host as native hardware, and the UI makes a cable's bandwidth budget inspectable. Exists as a Rust workspace of eight crates plus a driver layer. The transport is being absorbed into DemiurgeOS as a feature; the standalone paper waits for a systems venue.
PAPER 9 — 2027+
Concept — deferred
Abstract
The goal of this project is to support disruption of the hold capitalism has on digital instruments and DSP through an open-source, DIY framework for creating powerful instruments and effect processors. The modularity of the system allows people to pay for only the sensors and compute they need while providing a simple path toward making powerful digital interfaces with our thoughtfully designed PCBs, software (Arduino IDE fork with example programs and preinstalled libraries) and interactive guides.
Summary
Commercial digital pedals bundle sensors, compute, and DSP behind a fixed price and a closed enclosure; Open-Pedal unbundles them, so a builder pays only for what their instrument needs and owns the whole stack from schematic to firmware. The practice it formalizes is already live across the EMGOR hardware planets — the Pocket OpGorator, 4-i-Gor, and oFOOTS are effectively pre-Open-Pedal case studies — but the framework itself has no repository of its own yet. The one paper here that is still only an argument.