telepod

something got in

20 HP

Two sounds go in, one comes out, and it keeps changing. FUSE splices A into B; left alone, the splice goes deeper by the day and the body bends. The pieces that fall off are kept in a cabinet of ten jars, which plays them back. Anything in FLY gets in too.

The TELEPOD panel: a housefly's face in gold dots on black. A and B sit in its two eyes, each in a ring of bare circuit board shaped like an egg; SEND is between them, FLY below with a small fly-shaped window, four short dashes either side running down to FUSE, the big knob. DAYS and SHED stand at the sides with their jacks under them, NEW over a cabinet of ten jar-shaped windows on two shelves, OUT and CABINET at the bottom corners. telepod 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. SEND and NEW are buttons: SEND jumps the body a day, NEW starts a new one. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is OUT and CABINET, with a stand-in voice, drone and drums going in. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The splice, the days, the pieces, the cabinet and every light here are TELEPOD's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The voice, the drone and the drums are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

Two in, one out

Put one sound in each egg. What comes out is one thing: one sound's shape worn by the other's body, or only what the two have in common.

A, B: the two sounds. With nothing in B, it hears A, and A is fused with itself.
FUSE: how deep the splice goes. Fully left, the two side by side, as they went in. At noon, A speaks through B: A's vowels and its rise and fall, in B's pitch and grain. Fully right, neither: only the overtones they share.
FLY: anything patched here gets in. It's worn inside the fused sound, in its shape, and buzzes there.

The days

The splice doesn't stay put. Each day it goes deeper, whatever FUSE says, and the body takes a new shape: its vowels slide, its overtones stretch out of true and go metallic. The four dashes either side light in from the eggs as it deepens.

DAYS: how long a day is. Fully left, time stands still; just off it, an hour a day; noon, about a minute and a half; fully right, two seconds, so you hear it move.
SEND: the button, or a gate at its jack. The eggs flash, the sound is zapped and the body jumps a day. Clock it and the body changes every bar.
NEW: a new body. The days start again and the next shape is a new one; the cabinet keeps its jars.

What falls off

As it changes, pieces fall off: a band of the sound for a moment, cut out of OUT and kept in a jar. Ten jars sit on two shelves under NEW, lit as they fill.

SHED: how much falls off. Low, a short, narrow piece now and then; at full, several a second, up to six octaves wide, the whole sound at times: OUT is torn to pieces. Fully left, nothing falls and the cabinet keeps what it has. Late in the change, more falls.
The jars: each new piece goes in the next jar round, the oldest. A full jar glows as loud as its piece; the one playing is bright.

What comes out

OUT: the fused sound, less whatever is falling off it.
CABINET: the jars, played one after another, each brought up to the same loudness: a loop of everything that has fallen off, which changes a jar at a time.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 3 knobs (FUSE's big), a lit button, a button

Inputs

A, B: audio, ±5 V; B hears A when it's empty
FLY: audio, ±5 V
CVs: FUSE, DAYS, SHED: ±5 V half the knob's travel
SEND: gate, sends rising past 1 V

Outputs

OUT: audio, 21 ms behind A and B
CABINET: audio, ten jars of up to 0.6 s