tempers

20 HP · controller

A controller you play by feel. A number wanders across a lit field of numerals, and when it feels right you sort it with one of four keys. Each key keeps the last eight numbers you gave it and plays them back: four loops of numbers you picked.

The TEMPERS panel: black, with a goat in gold dots. Forty numerals of bare circuit board across the top, four rows of ten. Under them the knobs DRIFT, TEMPER and SCARY. Four square keys in a square round the middle, WOE and FROLIC above, DREAD and MALICE below, eight small round windows by each and sixteen down the middle between them. The outputs WOE, FROLIC, DREAD and MALICE beside their keys, NUMBER, CLOCK and DATA below, SORTED, REWARD and QUOTA at the foot. tempers 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. Sort: click or tap a key, press Space or Enter on it, or 1 to 4 with the panel in focus; hold a key two seconds to empty its bin. The rack sorts for you until you press a key or touch anything.

The numbers, the bins and their lights are TEMPERS's own. The drums and the four voices playing its outs are made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The field, the bins, the quota and every out here are TEMPERS's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums, the four voices and the sorting until you take over are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The number

Forty numerals light the top of the panel, and the number now is where they burn brightest: low on the left, high on the right. It wanders on its own and never quite reaches the ends. Now and then it leaps somewhere else, and for a moment the light tightens and a few numerals far off flare.

DRIFT: how fast it wanders, from a slow tide that takes half a minute to cross the field to a shiver that crosses it in a fraction of a second.
SCARY: how often it leaps, and how far. At 0 never; low, a rare short jump; full, several a second, anywhere.
DATA: patch a voltage in and it's the number's centre, the wander and the leaps on top of it.
NUMBER: the number itself, −5 to +5 V.

Sorting

When a number feels right, press a key: WOE, FROLIC, DREAD or MALICE. The number at that instant goes into the key's bin and straight out of its jack, the word on the key lights, and a pip by the key lights for it.

The keys: mechanical keyswitches with the word on the cap and a light in the switch.
SORTED: a trigger at every sort, from any key.
Hold a key for two seconds and its pips fade and its bin empties, the number you just sorted too. An empty bin's out sits at 0 V.

The bins

Each bin keeps the last eight numbers you sorted into it; a ninth pushes out the oldest. With no clock a bin holds the last one you gave it: four sample-and-holds with you as the trigger. Clock it and each bin steps round what it holds at its own length, so a bin of three against a bin of five makes loops that drift apart and come back together.

TEMPER bends each bin its own way. WOE sinks and slows: its numbers drop toward an octave under and it steps on every other clock, gliding between them. FROLIC throws numbers an octave up and splits each step in two, the number and then its octave. DREAD creeps, sliding into every number a step late. MALICE flips numbers upside down about 0 V and cuts each step short to the lowest number it holds.

CLOCK: each rising edge steps every bin on to its next number.
WOE, FROLIC, DREAD and MALICE: each bin's out, beside its key.
TEMPER: at 0 the outs are exactly what you sorted; gentle by noon, unmistakable at full.

The quota

Every number you sort fills the quota a little, two numbers to a pip up the middle of the panel. At 32 the quota is met: REWARD rolls, faster and faster for two seconds, the whole panel burns warm, and then every bin empties and the quota starts again. Emptying a bin by hand doesn't take back what it added.

QUOTA: 0 to 8 V, a quarter of a volt a sort.
REWARD: the roll, 27 triggers that speed up over two seconds.

The panel

Twenty HP, every part on the line's staggered grid and mirrored about the middle. The numerals, the bins' pips and the quota are circuit board lit from behind, 92 lights with the four in the keys. The art is a goat in gold dots.

DRIFT, TEMPER and SCARY under the field.
The four keys in a square round the quota, each bin's out beside its key.
NUMBER, CLOCK and DATA below them; SORTED, REWARD and QUOTA at the foot.