hostile architecture

no loitering

20 HP

It lets sound pass, but never lets it stay. Drums and short notes walk straight through; whatever sits there past its welcome is chopped, tipped off, combed, buried or hosed off, and comes out a second pair of outputs.

The HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE panel: black, a row of steel spikes in gold dots rising from the foot, the tallest on the middle pointing up at WELCOME, the big knob, in a ring of seventeen small square studs of bare circuit board. SPIKES and ARMRESTS over it, SLOPE and BOULDERS under it, each with a small pictogram window beside it; the SPRINKLER and GRINDER buttons out at the sides with theirs under them. IN L, CLOCK and IN R along the top with the SPRINKLER and GRINDER gates and WELCOME CV under them; PASSING L and R at the sides, MOVED ON L, LINGER and MOVED ON R along the foot. hostile architecture at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. SPRINKLER and GRINDER are buttons: press SPRINKLER to hose off whatever is lingering, and hold GRINDER to let everything stay. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is the rack through HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE: PASSING in the middle, MOVED ON off to the sides in a long dark reverb. Everything is made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The tiers, the bodies, the fixtures, the lights and every out here are HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums and synths are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

Staying

It splits the sound three ways, under 200 Hz, up to 2 kHz and over, and listens to each for a sound that sits still. Drums, plucks and short notes pass untouched. Only what stays is dealt with: a pad, a drone, a held note, a reverb tail, a bass that camps on one note.

WELCOME: how long a sound may stay. With CLOCK patched it steps: nothing, a quarter beat, half a beat, a beat, two beats, a bar, two bars, four bars, and fully up forever, which is off. Unpatched it runs free, from nothing to 8 seconds, and forever at the top.
WELCOME CV: ±5 V added to the knob, half its travel; with CLOCK patched it lands on the steps.
CLOCK: a pulse a beat. The bar is four, counted from the first pulse after two seconds' quiet; without it the fixtures count in 500 ms beats.
The ring: seventeen studs round WELCOME, a parking meter. While a sound stays they light round towards the pointer; past it they burn four times as bright, and the fixtures bite.

The fixtures

Each one acts only on a sound that has outstayed its welcome, whatever its pitch, and sends what it takes to MOVED ON. A light beside each knob is lit while it's taking something, brighter the more it takes.

ARMRESTS: gaps through it, each a 32nd of a bar, from one a bar to sixteen; at full it stutters in sixteenths.
SLOPE: tips it until it slides, its pitch sagging like a tape slowing, and drops it off the end. It's away for as long as it was welcome, then comes back. Below a quarter of the knob it only tilts.
SPIKES: a row of teeth rises through it over a beat. Only the teeth stay, metallic and hollow, 36 dB over the gaps at full.
BOULDERS: fills in from below, rising as far as five octaves; at full a camping bass is carved to air while each kick keeps its thump.

The sprinkler and the grinder

SPRINKLER: the button, or a gate at its jack. Whatever is lingering is soaked: over a beat it blooms into a wet smear and washes out to MOVED ON, then it's away for as long as it was welcome. The spray under the button flashes.
GRINDER: hold the button, or hold its gate high, and the fixtures come off: everything may stay, the ring goes dark and the sparks light. Let go and they're back on the next beat, so everything that stayed through a build is hit at once on the downbeat.

What comes out

PASSING L and R: what was let through.
MOVED ON L and R: everything the fixtures took. While nothing is sliding or being soaked, the two pairs add back up to the input.
LINGER: 5 V while any fixture is taking something. With ARMRESTS full it's a sixteenth-note gate that only exists while the music sits still.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 5 knobs (WELCOME's big), 2 buttons

Inputs

IN L, IN R: audio, ±5 V; IN R normalled to IN L
CLOCK: a pulse a beat, rising past 1.5 V
SPRINKLER, GRINDER: gates, past 1.5 V; SPRINKLER on the rise, GRINDER while high
WELCOME CV: ±5 V half the knob's travel

Outputs

PASSING L, PASSING R: audio, ±5 V
MOVED ON L, MOVED ON R: audio, ±5 V
LINGER: gate, 0 to 5 V