noctiluca

keep it alive

20 HP

A glass vial of living sea cells, the kind that lights a breaking wave at night. Knock on the glass and each cell it reaches flashes blue, and that real flash is your envelope. They tire, they rest, they only do it in their own night, and if you neglect them they die.

The NOCTILUCA panel: black, with a pair of cupped gold hands rising out of dark water, and between them a tall black pod with a slot in it and a glass vial behind the slot. Across its top KNOCK and WATER buttons; knobs for STIR, TONE, DEPTH, DUSK, RING and LINGER beside the pod and a big TAP knob under it; jacks down both sides: in on the left, KNOCK, STIR, TONE, TAP and SWELL, out on the right, HOUR, TIRED, SPARKLE, FLASH and SHORE.

The glass: tap it and they flash; drag on it to shake it. The ring at the top of the pod turns the sleeve. KNOCK strikes the glass as hard as TAP says. WATER: hold it for a fresh dose. 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 a knob back. The patches step on by themselves until you touch something.

A slow bass, opened by their flashes, and a bell for each sparkle. Listen plays the patch from its top, and they stay as you left them.

example patches

The real one has living cells in it and a sensor reading their light. A browser hasn't, so a small model of 1,800 cells stands in for them, in a room that's always dark. On this page an hour is a minute, starting an hour after dusk whatever the time is where you are; while you're away they keep real time. It keeps how you left them in this browser, and nothing leaves it.

The flash

The cells are dinoflagellates. Disturb one and it flashes: about a sixtieth of a second after it's touched the light comes up in ten milliseconds, and it's gone in about a fifth of a second. A sensor behind the vial reads that light, and it's what opens the filter. There's no envelope generator in it. Each flash is a real one, and no two are the same. A tired cell's flash is dimmer, and slower both ways.

TAP: the big knob and its jack. How hard the striker hits the glass. A light tap reaches a few cells; a full one, about one in twenty, and takes more out of them.
KNOCK: the button and its jack. A real solenoid strikes the vial once. You'll hear it.
STIR: shakes the bubble at the top of the water. From still, through a few sparkles a minute, to a boil of separate flashes under the surface. Their light won't last long at full, and hours of it stop them growing.
The glass: flick it with a fingernail. It's the same to them.

Keeping them

Nothing else in a rack asks anything of you. A night's light is a budget, and they spend it on what you ask. Flog them today and they're dim tomorrow. Leave them be and they come back. They want cool water, proper dark and a proper day, so the vial stands off the panel in its own pod, out of the case's warmth, with a lamp in it. The vial's only where they work. They live in a flask of seawater on a shelf, and every fortnight or so the vial gets a fresh dose. A culture has moods over weeks, so no two months sound the same.

The sleeve: turn the ring at the top of the pod. Open, you can see them, and every other light on the panel goes out, because it's blue and faint and only shows in a dark room. Shut, it's dark in there whatever the room's doing, and the hands light with what the sensor reads.
DUSK: where their night falls. They only flash in it. By day the lamp's on them, the panel's bright and nothing will make them answer. Turn it and the lamp's hours walk there about an hour a day, so you move their night to your gig a fortnight ahead.
WATER: hold it when you've given them fresh water, so the module can keep count.
RESTING, TIRED, UNWELL: three small lit words. No numbers. UNWELL is too warm, or a long way under their best.
It can die. A hot week or a forgotten vial will do it. You keep the culture yourself; the module comes without one.

What their light does

SWELL: what goes through. With nothing in it, it's the sea: noise that only their light lets out.
TONE: how far a flash opens the filter, and its jack. Fully left it stays shut, a rumble. At full, a flash throws it from that to the top of the air.
DEPTH: how much of the sound lives only inside a flash. Fully left it's always there and only the filter moves. At full there's silence between flashes.
RING: how hard the filter rings. Turned up, each flash strikes it like a bell.
LINGER: how long a flash takes to let the filter go, from their own fall to four seconds. Turned up, flashes pile into a tide.

What comes out

SHORE: SWELL, shaped by their light.
FLASH: the flash itself, 0 to 8 V, off the sensor's own amplifier, before any chip. Patch it to anything that wants an envelope.
SPARKLE: a trigger for each flash the sensor can tell apart. It's biological noise, and it thins out as they tire.
TIRED: 0 to 8 V, how far under themselves they are. It rises as you work them and falls as they rest.
HOUR: 0 V at dusk, 8 V at dawn, back down through their day. A clock with a twenty-four hour bar.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 7 knobs, 2 buttons, a sleeve on a ring
Senses: the cells' own light, and how warm they are

Inputs

SWELL: audio, ±5 V
KNOCK: trigger, rising past 1 V
TAP, STIR: CV, ±5 V
TONE: CV, ±5 V

Outputs

SHORE: audio, ±5 V
FLASH, TIRED: CV, 0 to 8 V
HOUR: CV, 0 to 8 V
SPARKLE: trigger, 5 V