unsupported transit

all four feet off the ground

20 HP

A groove made of a real horse's gait, from a walk to a gallop on one knob, and a printed picture that really runs, with no screen: one turn of a black disc over a film is one stride. And in the instant all four feet leave the ground, your whole track goes with them.

The UNSUPPORTED TRANSIT panel: black, with gold dots of a black horse reared up and facing you, its head under the name, its forelegs up to the top corners and its hind legs out to the bottom corners. A round hole fills the middle of the panel.

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. Take the disc: drag it round by its rim. It stops under your thumb, follows it either way, and if you let go moving it carries on. Or tab to it: the arrow keys push it on and hold it back, Home brakes it, End whips it. LEAD is a button to press. The patches step on by themselves until you touch something.

A dark loop in A minor at 124 BPM goes through UNSUPPORTED TRANSIT. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Everything UNSUPPORTED TRANSIT does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser, the disc's weight and motor included. The picture is the real trick, worked out live: six frames cut into strips along a spiral, one film, and a slit laid over it at the disc's angle. The real one has a thumb on real brass; the page stands in with your pointer. The loop is a stand-in rack.

The gaits

Four legs, each following its neighbours. Turn PACE up and the horse walks, trots, canters and gallops, changing by itself at the speeds real horses do, with a stumble in the changeover and not at a switch, and at a lower speed on the way down.

PACE: a slow walk to flat out. Four even beats, then two, then three and a lift, then four in a tumble and a long lift.
The disc: one turn is one stride, so it turns at strides a minute. It's a real flywheel with its rim out in the open. A thumb stops it, drags the horse with it, runs it backwards; a flick whips it on.
CLOCK: the disc locks to it. A walk takes four pulses a stride, a trot two, a canter one and a half, a gallop one, so the gait changes and the tempo doesn't.
WHIP: any voltage urges it on, at once, and it eases off over a few seconds. Without a clock a trigger is a crack of the whip: the disc spins up past anything a horse can do, the hooves run into a roll, and it runs back down.

The air

Nothing schedules the lift. It's the moment no foot happens to be on the ground, worked out from the feet. A walk never gets there, a trot barely does, and a gallop does on every stride.

TRACK: anything: a loop, a mix, your whole rack.
LIFT: TRACK, lifted out of the mix while the horse is in the air: the low end goes first, then the rest, and it lands.
HANG: how far. Fully left nothing's lifted, at noon it's right out for the air alone, and past noon it stays up after the landing, until at full you only get a stab at the end of the stride.
Hold the disc in the air with your thumb and the track stays up there until you let go.

The horse

SURFACE: what the hooves hit: sand, turf, road, bone. At bone each hoof is struck and bounces, tuned to a note of its own.
WEIGHT: a pony to a draught horse: pitch, length, thud, and how long its feet stay down. A pony's in the air a third of the time; a draught horse's trot never leaves the ground.
LAME: one leg goes late and light, then a second, and then the stride comes apart. It's a stagger you can dial in, and it eats the lift.
LEAD: which foreleg leads. It swaps near and off on the very next lift, as a real horse does, so whatever each side's gates play swap places with no stumble. Lit, it's on the near lead.

The picture

There's no screen here and no dots. Four horses, one to a gait, are printed still on a film behind a black disc with one fine spiral slit. As the disc turns the slit crosses the film and the horses run.

Each gait's horse has its own light. The one you're in is lit, the other three run on in the dark, and each is as bright as the legs are true to its gait, so a changeover shows as it happens.
The film is drawn from the same numbers as the gates: a hoof lands in the picture as its gate goes high.
Stop the disc and you can see the slit working, under the glass beside the panel. Spin it hard and the frames run together into a pale blur.

What comes out

NEAR FORE, OFF FORE, NEAR HIND, OFF HIND: a gate a foot, high while it's on the ground, so each rises on the hoofbeat and is as long as that stance. One in each corner of the panel, as if you were over the horse with its nose at the top.
AIR: a gate, high while all four are up.
HOOVES: the built-in hoofbeats.
LIFT: TRACK with the air cut out of it.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: a motorised flywheel disc that feels a thumb on its rim, 5 knobs, 1 lit button

Inputs

CLOCK: clock, gate
WHIP: trigger or CV, 0 to 5 V
TRACK: audio, ±5 V

Outputs

Feet: NEAR FORE, OFF FORE, NEAR HIND, OFF HIND: gates, 5 V
AIR: gate, 5 V
HOOVES: audio, ±5 V
LIFT: audio, ±5 V