MCI | Multiple Contour Integrator (2017)

Multiple Contour Integrator (MCI) was a chaotic software instrument similar to TCO. Where TCO’s nonlinearities and chaotic tendencies were the result of feedback through delay lines, a wavefolder, and pseudo-rungler, MCI instead uses feedback and waveshaping via banks of arbitrary transfer functions.

Each of MCI’s two oscillators included a “wavetable” of sixteen waves, which could be arbitrarily edited, stored, and recalled by the user. The second oscillator’s waveshaper offered the ability to continuously blend between the oscillator itself and the waveshaping process’s own output as the lookup table’s phasor, making it possible to create chaotic, gestural tones with the waveshaper alone. It was possible (and usually quite rewarding) to allow sonic structures to emerge by manually drawing new waveshaping transfer functions in real time, deeply affecting the emergent behaviors of the chaotic synthesis structure.

As with TCO, each oscillator could also be used to cross-modulate one another in a variety of ways. MCI retained the same pseudo-rungler and wavefolding section from TCO.

As with TCO, all parameters were OSC-controllable, making it a strong contender for use in network music performances. All settings could be randomized, stored, and recalled performatively from the user interface or from QWERTY keyboard, and the UI of one instance could be used to generate OSC to send to remote instances (useful for telematic performance).

MCI also included an experimental “Score Definition” process, by which stochastic processes could be used to define meta-structures that would change the device’s settings over time—partly by programmatically engaging the Instrument Definition storage/recall system, partly through direct stochastic control of various parameters, and partly through global state randomization. With a couple of simple adjustments, it was possible to generate a multidimensional “score” which would realize a “composition,” which could last from mere milliseconds to multiple hours in duration.

I simultaneously considered MCI to be an experiment in telematic control, performative meta-control of a chaotic synthesis structure, and the use of stochastic rules to generate emergent formal structures. Though fruitful in many regards, it was quickly retired—with many of its concepts carried forward into later applications, most notably the MIGSI 2 Software Application. Additionally, the use of feedback through waveshapers with arbitrary transfer functions has become the focus of more recent developments, most notably the Mapper system and, in particular, the map01 Delta Scan Mapping Interface.