Navigating a Guzheng Phrase Corpus Through Ballet-Driven Granular Synthesis

Yueshen Wu, and Yuting Xue

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

This paper presents an interactive audio-visual system that reimagines cultural movement as a public interface for accessible musical expression. It allows participants to reshape a Chinese Guzheng soundscape through ballet-inspired body movement. Based on granular synthesis, we recontextualize Chinese Guzheng phrases and performance techniques as a sonic corpus that can be navigated by ballet postural vocabulary, complemented by expressive sound descriptor shaping to enrich the sonic result and legibility. In addition, we develop a hybrid classification-regression mapping strategy in which “in-between” and deviated postures are supported by interpolating between learned examples. The contribution is an intercultural co-adaptation experiment in NIME practice by proposing a shared interaction language between communities.

Citation

Yueshen Wu, and Yuting Xue. 2026. Navigating a Guzheng Phrase Corpus Through Ballet-Driven Granular Synthesis. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784342 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_111,
 abstract = {This paper presents an interactive audio-visual system that reimagines cultural movement as a public interface for accessible musical expression. It allows participants to reshape a Chinese Guzheng soundscape through ballet-inspired body movement. Based on granular synthesis, we recontextualize Chinese Guzheng phrases and performance techniques as a sonic corpus that can be navigated by ballet postural vocabulary, complemented by expressive sound descriptor shaping to enrich the sonic result and legibility. In addition, we develop a hybrid classification-regression mapping strategy in which “in-between” and deviated postures are supported by interpolating between learned examples. The contribution is an intercultural co-adaptation experiment in NIME practice by proposing a shared interaction language between communities.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {111},
 author = {Yueshen Wu and Yuting Xue},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20784342},
 editor = {Benedict Gaster and João Tragtenberg and Anna Xambó and Tom Mitchell},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {},
 numpages = {8},
 pages = {924--931},
 title = {Navigating a Guzheng Phrase Corpus Through Ballet-Driven Granular Synthesis},
 track = {paper},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_111.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}