Wall of Doubt
written for the EV and GPU shader
Premiered on 2 May 2022 at the Digitalis Festival, Old Cabell Hall, UVA.
Program notes:
Wall of Doubt is a composition for, and performed on, the EV, a hybrid digital–acoustic string instrument that integrates lutherie with embedded computing and digital signal processing. In this work, the EV’s internal synthesis parameters are transmitted to a shader—a program run directly on the computer’s GPU—and mediated by a foot pedal. Here, the visual media becomes a canvas through which the EV’s internal logic is rendered visible.
The shader generates two contrasting image systems: one of horizontal bars gliding back and forth across the screen, and another of a spinning wheel that reinterprets the same data as shifting slices of a circle—two visual metaphors drawn from the same source yet divergent in expression. The moving bars form a kind of wall, a surface of resistance and tension, while the circular form opens outward, evoking an expansive and penetrating wisdom that perceives what lies beyond. Together, they trace the transformation of doubt—from constraint into possibility, from fixation into vision.
Wall of Doubt explores doubt not as paralysis, but as a creative force. It is a state where indeterminacy becomes generative, where embracing uncertainty allows transformation to emerge.
Credits: Lindgren: composition, mixing/mastering, video post production Travis Thatcher: video + sound recording