Sound out of Paper
A.Smirnov. November, 2007.

Brief historical overview and detailed timeline of the Graphical Sound Technique in Soviet Russia (1929-1951) including:
- Hand drawn Ornamental Sound (Avraamov, early Yankovsky);
- Hand made Paper Sound (Voinov, Ter-Gevondian and Konstantinov);
- Automated Paper Sound - Variophone as a sort of proto-wavetable synthesis (Sholpo, Rimsky-Korsakov);
- Spectral analysis, decomposition and re-synthesis technique (Yankovsky).
Because of the cross-disciplinary nature of Graphical Sound technique, people involved in it had to be skilled not only in music, but in acoustics, mathematics, sound-on-film technology and engineering. As a result even skilled journalists often could not understand the physical meaning of the phenomena under consideration or specific technological ideas. Having no developed terminology, many mistakes and unexpected “puzzles” appeared in their writings.
Although there were several short articles published in USA by V.Solev (Solev 1935), most publications about research and developments in the USSR were in Russian. At the same time the most important documents were never published at all and were circulating in manuscript form, similar to “Samizdat” (self-published forbidden literature) from the 1960a through the 1980s. In fact almost no information about numerous exiting concepts and inventions related to art and music technology, was translated and published in any foreign language. Consequently, the historical timeline known to the Western readers is incomplete. Being translated and published, this forgotten history will once again open up the question of historical priority.

Computer Music Journal, MIT Press. In preparation for publication.