the weight of stars

This month's piece is a bit different; rather than the usual Windows executable, I've returned to my roots and created a VST audio plugin.

To use it you will need a Windows VST3 plugin host, but that includes basically any modern DAW (I use Reaper myself).

There are a handful of presets to demonstrate how to use it, but if you'd like the low level/technical explanation, here goes:

So I was originally thinking about allpass filters (a special class of filter which alter the phase of a signal, but not its frequency content), and how they basically work by delaying the input signal and mixing the delayed signal with some feedback and feedforward copies. And I figured that if the core building block is just a delay, it should be possible to manipulate and modulate that delay in the same way you would do with other kinds of effects (e.g. chorus, flangers, reverbs).

This plugin is the result of my experimentation along those lines; 4 identical allpass filters connected in series, with modulatable delay times and allpass coefficients (marked 90° Frequency on the UI, as it controls the frequency at which the output signal will be 90° out of phase with the input). Plus a feedback path from the output of the 4th filter back to the input of the 1st.

It's quite a versatile plugin, capable of flanging, comb filtering, delays, and reverbs. Though all of them do feel a little idiosyncratic if you're familiar with the usual implementations of those kind of effects.

I used JUCE to make it, so this one's released under the GPL instead of my usual Anti-Capitalist Software License. We'll be back to normal next month.

Download the weight of stars

The Rules:

• The file at this link will be deleted 1 month from now (1/7/23).
• All downloads are zipfiles containing a Windows executable.
• All source code and assets are included, licensed under the GPL.
• As long as you abide by the license, you can do whatever you want with the download.

Further Reading

I gotta take a showa

A no-combat doom map with some serious style, by Emma Essex (youtube playthrough).

A fascinating twitter thread on the evolution of men's fashion since the early 2000's, in the service of calling out some weird far-right arsehole.

A wonderful long read on early computer art from Amy Goodchild.

I re-read Jeff Noon's Falling Out of Cars this month. I think most people know Noon for his debut Vurt, but that one didn't do much for me. Falling Out of Cars is something else though; the tale of a virus causing the world to dissolve into noise, beautiful and disorientating. It reminds me a bit of Ballards The Drowned World; the apocalypse well under way and the protagonist running towards it, not away, falling ever deeper in.

A cool portrait of a conscientious objector shop steward in the first tweet, with an excellent reveal in the 2nd tweet.

I also finally read Max Haiven's Art After Money, Money After Art, and I reckon I'm going to be thinking about it for a while. A quote:

"I am most interested in the way art functions in what Gregory Sholette calls the "dark matter," the hidden mass of creativity in society at large on which the "art world" depends but that it does not include. These include all those heavily indebted art students who will never see their name on a gallery wall (as either patron or patronized), all of those so-called amateurs, hobbyists and tinkerers whose creative labor will never be valorized, and especially all those sly activists, vengeful tricksters, weaponized malcontents and communist hackers who leverage "art" toward radical ends, or even simply in the name of a yet un-foreclosed possibility of freedom or joy."

(emphasis mine)

Cool photography game by Jonathan West.

I suspect this opinion may be heretical to MBV fans, but I think this is the best thing Kevin Shields ever did.

The further reading list was going to be longer than that, but a substantial chunk of it was links to smart people saying smart things about AI, and I think I've reached the point where I thoroughly resent having to devote any time or thought to the topic at all. It doesn't solve any problems I have (or, for that matter, the problems its proponents claim it will solve), it's obscenely resource intensive for what it actually does, it's already being used as a stick to beat organised labour...

I'm going to go outside and listen to the birds instead, remind myself there is a world outside venture capitalist tech bullshit. Take care out there.