Feigning humanity: Virtual instruments, simulation and performativity

Abstract

This article is concerned with the ways virtual instrument software simulates acoustic human performance. In particular, it examines two case studies-virtual orchestral instruments and virtual singing instruments-to consider how their design and implementation seek to express human music performance by adopting the micro and macro sonic variations of timing, pitch, dynamics, articulation, ambience, and other limitations imposed by the physical relationship between the player and the instrument. Baudrillard considers that "simulation threatens the difference between the 'true' and the 'false', the 'real' and the 'imaginary'" (1994: 3). By feigning the acoustic markers of expressive human musical performance, virtual instrument designers and composer-users encourage the listener to produce, in themselves, the experience of hearing an orchestra or singer. Users also contribute to the recontextualization of human performance by feeding back into the cultures and development cycles of virtual instrument software, where sonic gestures are recurrently refreshed. The construction of virtual instruments as devices of musical expressivity is, therefore, an evolving, mutually constructed, and performative endeavour.