// Node Based Tool Design
I spent an evening this week back in Max/MSP, patching boxes together on a canvas, watching numbers and audio move from one to the next in something close to real time.
A look at node based tool design: what it actually is, where you’ve probably already met it, the patterns that keep showing up wherever someone builds one of these, and why the same shape might be the best way to work with AI itself.
Also: modular synths, Mark Fell on why he builds his own tools inside Max/MSP, and why a shader node in Blender is doing the same basic trick as a mixing desk.
// SAM: Software Automatic Mouth
A browser replica of SAM, the 1982 Commodore 64 text-to-speech program. Type something, tune pitch, speed, mouth and throat, and it reads it back in that unmistakable cracked robot voice. Built on a vanilla JS port of the original engine.
// Information Appliances
Every function a device can perform is something your brain has to hold open as a possibility.
Jef Raskin, the Canon Cat, and why a device that only does one thing asks less of you than one that does everything.
Also: a language with only one variable, a phone that used to do one thing at a time, and the iPod again.
// Are You an Artist?
Two different strangers asked me the same question. I wasn’t ready for it either time.
A post about identity, creative practice, and the masks we wear to avoid answering things honestly.
Also: Supersonic festival, Halima Cassell’s ceramics, and a coffee shop conversation I’m glad I had.
I'd love to tell you more. Let's work together.