lacuna

remembering erases

20 HP

It keeps the last half minute you played as sixteen memories round its big knob, and plays grains of the one you turn to. Every grain wears its moment away: the edges first, then pieces of it, until it's blank. HIDE tucks one into the oldest place, where it lasts.

The LACUNA panel: black, in gold dots a narrow street at night seen straight down the middle, shuttered shops and blank signs either side, wet cobbles lit up the middle. Round the big REMEMBER knob in the middle a dial of sixteen rays of bare circuit board, each cut in three from the knob out, over the knob's own sweep. NOW and REMEMBER's jack at the top corners, GRAIN's and FORGET's jacks inside them, the GRAIN and FORGET knobs under them, REMAINS and BLANK out either side of the dial, WANDER and BLUR under them, HIDE's and CLOCK's jacks either side of the HIDE button at the foot, LEFT and RIGHT out at the foot corners. lacuna at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it or tap either side of it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. HIDE is a button: press it to hide the memory REMEMBER is on. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

A singer in E minor over a dark loop, into NOW; the cloud out of LEFT and RIGHT over them. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything LACUNA does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser, with the module's own half minute of memory. The singer and the loop are a stand-in rack.

The memories

LACUNA writes NOW into sixteen memories of two seconds round its big knob: the newest at the left end of its sweep, the oldest at the right. It only writes while there's sound, so when you stop playing, the memories wait. Each ray is a memory, its start nearest the knob, and it dims and breaks up as it wears.

NOW: the sound it remembers, mono.
REMEMBER, the big knob: which memory, and how far into it; its pointer points at the ray it plays. Fully left is the now, grains from just behind the writing; the now doesn't wear.
REMEMBER, the jack: its CV, added to the knob, 5 V the whole way round.

The grains

GRAIN: how long the grains are and how many at once. Fully left a buzz of 12 ms grains, 125 a second; at noon a cloud; fully right a second and a half each, whole phrases laid over each other.
GRAIN, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
WANDER: how far the grains stray from REMEMBER, and how wide across the stereo. Fully left every grain from exactly there; at noon a memory either way; fully right from anywhere on the dial at once.
CLOCK: patched, a grain starts on each of its rises instead, so the memories come back chopped on the beat.

Forgetting

FORGET: how fast it forgets. Every grain wears the memory it plays: at noon six full replays and it's blank, fully right half of one. And an eraser runs back round the dial from the newest, wearing each memory it crosses: at noon every half minute, taking a little; fully right every two seconds, taking everything. Fully left it never forgets.
FORGET, the jack: its CV, added to the knob.
A memory's edges go first, its first and last half second from the outside in; then its middle goes, piece by piece, until it's blank and plays silence.
BLUR: how a fading memory sounds. Fully left it stays clear to the end, only its gaps heard; at noon it goes dark and thin as it wears; fully right, once it's been replayed at all, it darkens, sinks an octave and smears.

Hiding one

HIDE, a lit button and its gate: the memory REMEMBER is on is tucked into the oldest place, where it doesn't belong. It stays there while the others move past it, and wears at a quarter of the pace. Its cap stays lit while one is hidden.
REMEMBER fully right finds it. One at a time: hide another and the last is let go; HIDE on the hidden one lets it go.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the cloud, the grains only, spread by WANDER.
REMAINS: how much is left of the memory REMEMBER is on, 8 V fresh down to 0 V blank. Lean on a moment and it falls.
BLANK: a trigger whenever a memory goes blank.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a big knob, 4 knobs, a lit button

Inputs

NOW: audio, ±5 V, mono
CVs: REMEMBER, GRAIN, FORGET: added to their knobs, 5 V the whole way
HIDE, CLOCK: gates, rising past 1 V

Outputs

LEFT, RIGHT: audio, the cloud, up to ±4.5 V
REMAINS: CV, 0 to 8 V
BLANK: trigger, 5 V, 10 ms