Emergent Resonance

Visda Goudarzi

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

Emergent Resonance is a politically situated sonic intervention responding to the simultaneous violence of U.S. military bombing in Iran and the killing of Iranian protesters by the Iranian regime. Composed during a moment of profound personal and political discomfort, the work emerges from my position as an American-Iranian music technologist. In this moment, composing feels less like an artistic endeavor and more like a moral obligation.The piece constructs a sonic language of fragmentation, resonance, and decay through algorithmic and live-coded processes. Vocal-like textures and melodic gestures are broken into granular debris, echoes, and spectral residues that resemble sonic ash—unstable remnants of voices that persist even as they are suppressed. Rather than referencing a specific source, the work evokes the collective presence of silenced voices through processes of erosion, distortion, and transformation. Glitches, instability, and loss of coherence function as metaphors for censorship, violence, and collective mourning.Within the context of the alt.nime track at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, this piece is not presented simply as music, but as a provocation. It questions the neutrality often assumed in music technology research and asks what responsibility artists and technologists carry when their tools exist within systems of geopolitical power.What does it mean to design sonic systems while bombs fall and protesters are shot? Can music technologies serve as forms of witnessing, or do they risk turning tragedy into aesthetic material? By foregrounding discomfort, contradiction, and diasporic responsibility, the work invites the NIME community to confront the political entanglements of its own technological practices.

Citation

Visda Goudarzi. 2026. Emergent Resonance. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20741958 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2026_alt_8,
 abstract = {Emergent Resonance is a politically situated sonic intervention responding to the simultaneous violence of U.S. military bombing in Iran and the killing of Iranian protesters by the Iranian regime. Composed during a moment of profound personal and political discomfort, the work emerges from my position as an American-Iranian music technologist. In this moment, composing feels less like an artistic endeavor and more like a moral obligation.The piece constructs a sonic language of fragmentation, resonance, and decay through algorithmic and live-coded processes. Vocal-like textures and melodic gestures are broken into granular debris, echoes, and spectral residues that resemble sonic ash—unstable remnants of voices that persist even as they are suppressed. Rather than referencing a specific source, the work evokes the collective presence of silenced voices through processes of erosion, distortion, and transformation. Glitches, instability, and loss of coherence function as metaphors for censorship, violence, and collective mourning.Within the context of the alt.nime track at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, this piece is not presented simply as music, but as a provocation. It questions the neutrality often assumed in music technology research and asks what responsibility artists and technologists carry when their tools exist within systems of geopolitical power.What does it mean to design sonic systems while bombs fall and protesters are shot? Can music technologies serve as forms of witnessing, or do they risk turning tragedy into aesthetic material? By foregrounding discomfort, contradiction, and diasporic responsibility, the work invites the NIME community to confront the political entanglements of its own technological practices.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 articleno = {8},
 author = {Visda Goudarzi},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20741958},
 editor = {Allie Texeira Riggs and Giacomo Lepri and Yann Seznec},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 note = {},
 numpages = {1},
 pages = {42--42},
 title = {Emergent Resonance},
 track = {alt.nime},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2026/nime2026_alt_8.pdf},
 year = {2026}
}