contort by daylight noise

contort

danced in another room

20 HP

Two sounds go in, the dancer and the body, and whatever the dancer does is done to the body, magnified and wrong. Every step slams it, every glide wrenches its pitch further than it went, every hard edge cracks it and throws it across the room. SWAP, and they trade places.

The dancer and the body

CONTORT listens to the dancer the whole time: how loud it is against how loud it's been lately, where its pitch is going (in a voice, a bassline, even a kick's fall), and every hard edge. Each move is carried across to the body, which never moves on its own: hold the dancer still and the body settles back to itself.

DANCER: the sound that moves. Drums, a voice, a bassline, anything with a shape.

BODY: the sound that's moved. A pad, a drone, a chord. With nothing in it, the module's own held voice, a low chord, waits to be danced.

The moves

FORCE, the big knob: how hard each step lands. The body's level follows the dancer's, magnified: fully left nothing lands, at noon the body moves half as far again as the dancer, at full six times as far: gone between the steps and slammed into its ceiling on each, every step a blow.

TWIST: how far the body's pitch is wrenched by the dancer's. A glide, a bend, a vibrato or a new note throws the body's pitch the same way and further, then it springs back as the note holds: half as far again at noon, six times at full, up to two octaves either way.

BREAK: how hard the dancer's edges crack the body. Each one snaps it, splinters it and folds it, as deep as the edge was hard, healing in a fiftieth of a second at the left and a fifth of a second at full.

THROW: how far each edge throws the body across the room, the next one the other way, swinging back between them. At full every hit flings it hard to one side.

FORCE, TWIST, BREAK, the jacks: their CVs, added to the knobs.

The room and the trade

ROOM: how much of the dancer is heard beside the body, and the studio round them. Fully left only the body, dry; at full the dancer at full beside it and both far off in a long, empty room.

SWAP, a lit button and its gate: they trade places, the body dancing and the dancer breaking. Press again to trade back; while the gate's high they're traded; the cap is lit while they're swapped.

LEAP, a lit button and its gate: the dancer leaps, one huge move at once, landing on the body through every knob.

The mirror lights from its middle out as far as each step reaches, tips up or down with the twist, cracks along its shards on every break, and flashes at its centre on every edge.

What comes out

BODY: the body as danced, on its own.

LEFT, RIGHT: the body where it's been thrown, the dancer beside it and the room.

MOVE: the dancer's movement as a voltage, 0 to 8 V: 4 V at its usual level, up on every step, down in the gaps.

SNAP: a trigger on every hard edge the dancer makes, whether BREAK cracks the body or not.

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front: the jacks, the knobs, SWAP and LEAP, the 102 white LEDs and the whole circuit, the USB-C in a notch in its left edge. Each shard of the mirror has its own LEDs, one to ten spread along it, in the cells of a black printed baffle, so the cracks between the shards stay dark. An RP2350 runs it on both its cores, one watching the dancer, the other the body.

The CONTORT panel mid-step: the mirror lit from its middle out, a crack running through its shards, its knobs, jacks and buttons on.

Drag it or use the arrow keys to turn it; click it to take it apart.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Depth: 20.8 mm behind the panel
+12 V: about 65 mA dark, 135 mA dancing, 265 mA at the most, its lights at their cap (estimated)
−12 V: about 6 mA (estimated)
+5 V: not used
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, 2 lit buttons

I/O

DANCER, BODY: audio in, ±5 V with room to ±9 V; BODY empty, the module's held voice
SWAP, LEAP: gates, high past about 1 V; safe to ±12 V
CVs: FORCE, TWIST, BREAK: added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way; safe to ±12 V
BODY: audio out, the body alone, under a soft ceiling: exact to 3 V, never past 4.45 V
LEFT, RIGHT: audio out, the mix, the same ceiling
MOVE: CV, 0 to 8 V, 4 V at the dancer's usual level
SNAP: trigger, 5 V, 5 ms

Engine

Brain: RP2350, both cores, at 46.875 kHz, 32-bit float
Watching: 1,500 times a second; each sound's pitch from 55 Hz to 1 kHz, 125 times a second
Light: 102 white LEDs, over 150 frames a second
Power cycle: it wakes untraded; only the calibration is kept