Everything is within reach. Touch the screen and get hands on with the hardware.
- Power switch
- The lit POWER rocker, like the switch on a power strip. In the dark it glows and pulses: press it to I and the whole paddle lights as FERA OS wakes, its sound with it; press it back to O to shut down. Every control on the machine does one job, the same in both modes.
- Orange button
- FILM (F): in and out of the film you are on. When a galaxy has you locked it flashes, reading IN VIEW · PRESS TO WATCH; out in the dark it reads FLY TO A GALAXY. On the map it fills the screen with the film of the galaxy you are on and prints you a ticket; pressed again, it goes back to the map. If the browser held the sound back at power-on, it starts it.
- Moving and zooming
- The joystick is the only way to move: it flies you freely over the map, faster the further you push, and near a galaxy a magnet takes you in and locks on, its film coming through as you close (let go and the nearest galaxy draws you in; push on to break free; the arrow keys give it a nudge). The band only reads: the films' route unrolled, newest first, its needle on the film you are nearest. The ZOOM gauge beside the joystick shows how close you are: drag it up to close in, down to see more of the map or the picture (the mouse wheel on the screen moves it too). Dragging the screen itself does nothing on the map: fly with the joystick.
- Universes
- The films are one universe seen from above, a chart of contour lines revolving slowly, every film a galaxy on a winding route, newest first, each labelled where it lies. The universes of the music (I to VI) live in music mode, all of them on one signal.
- Films on the air
- On the map the galaxy you are on shows its film through a round lens at its core, its sound coming through quietly. Press FILM and it fills the screen in its own colours. The knobs grade it (their legends change with the mode): SPEED runs it from 80 to 120%, EXTRAPOLATION softens it and sets its lens breathing and its colours pulling apart, and the tape's drift wanders over it by itself; the pads interfere with its picture and sound, and the jog scrubs through it. A film without a file of its own here shows its poster as a still, drifting slowly through the same screen; every film in view has a WATCH ON YOUTUBE button.
- Intercept monitor
- A small CRT. It shows the city's live camera when one is on the air, otherwise the universe's archive clips; between universes every picture overlaps. Changes of picture mix (crossfade, dissolve, one colour channel at a time) instead of cutting. ↑ ↓ switch between Tokyo, New York and Shanghai; the lamp beside it reads LIVE, ARCH or MIX.
- Knobs and part keys
- Two knobs grade whatever is on: SPEED (VELOCITY in music mode, 80 to 120% of the tempo) and EXTRAPOLATION (the tone, and the picture's lens and colour fringe breathing with the bar). The tape's drift wanders by itself. Beside them four keys take their part of the music out, or bring it back, over a second and a half: DRIVE (the electro kick, clap and hats), JAZZ (recorded bebop triangle pings; with VELOCITY near the top, a jazz break takes over and DRIVE leaves it the kick and the snare), PADS and LEAD. Each glows in its own colour while its part plays, and a lit beat keeps looping.
- Play
- Four big pads interfere with the real output, one at a time: GLITCH (Z) stutters and crushes the last beat and tears the picture, ECHO (X) throws the signal into a fading echo, REVERB (C) washes it out and sinks the picture, POLY (V) pulses in threes against the beat. In music mode each pad also cuts the film to its next picture in a handover of its own: GLITCH by city blocks, ECHO a heartbeat ring, REVERB through the brightest lines, POLY a spiral. R records a cut of the screen and its sound, up to 30 seconds, and saves it as a video file. Beside the jog is a VAULT under a cover with an eye; whoever finds its key gets in.
- MODE switch
- The switch beside the pads: an ivory cap that clicks between two notches on a plate. Click it up (drag it, click it, or M) and the main screen goes to emergency: MUSIC MODE: NIGHT GRID's music, and a single film made with code running through the universes, each picture handing over to the next in its own way (through its brightest lines, cell by cell, in veins, a heartbeat, the wind, a radar sweep, city blocks, contour lines, a spiral arm, a warp), the fronts pushed by the beat. Its MUSIC lamp blinks while it is up. The room goes dark, the mix sinks and the screen counts down, and it all drops in on the bar with a hit. Click it down, or press FILM, for the films.
- The map
- Every galaxy you lock onto is marked in the log (EXPLORED, kept in this browser). Press FILM on a galaxy and the printer hands you a ticket for its film. The film on the needle sounds from where its galaxy lies. Somewhere off the route there is a signal with no galaxy: listen for the static.
- Intercepts
- Now and then, while you are on the films, something comes in and wanders over the map. The detector beside the band shows it as a coral blip with its distance (TX) and flashes INCOMING; the static crackles as you near it; close enough, it shows on the map as a tiny bright glow trailing light. Fly close and it pulls the crosshair onto itself like a magnet: lock rings close on it and an arc fills as you scan. Hold it there for three seconds before it warps away, and it shows itself: a species never seen, made up on the spot from a seed of its own, with its field notes, until you press EXIT. How long it stays is a roll of the die, one to six seconds; the first one never stays.
- The detector
- On the films the small monitor by the band is a radar centred on you: an intercept shows as a coral blip (on the rim when it is far), and something else hides out there too, a faint green blip only when you are close. In music mode it is a television of the archive played by the beat: on a loud beat a random clip cuts in, with a transition and an overlay drawn in code, on a quiet one the same clip goes round again.
- The room
- While the sound is on, the wall behind the machine takes the screen's colour and pulses with the music.
- Joystick
- An analogue stick in a dish in the case: its ball leans and sinks as you push, its rubber boot follows, and it throws its shadow away from the room's light. It springs back when you let go. On the map it flies you freely, and the galaxies pull you in like magnets. In music mode it steers round the picture and dives in, and plays the bass: across sweeps its filter, up modulates it.
- Jog
- Grab the JOG platter and spin it to scratch the last seconds of the signal; let go and it returns. On a film filling the screen it scrubs through the film instead.
- The picture
- The films' map is drawn live too: its terrain breathes down into the galaxies' wells with the bass, its contours light on the kick, its stars twinkle with the hats, its galaxies turn and swell with the pads. In music mode each universe has its pictures, drawn live in the screen's HUD, and when the monitor's footage changes the screen morphs to the next one, a different morph each time: the tube switching off and on, slit columns, hexagons flipping, a kaleidoscope, a ripple, a storm, a datamosh, a pixel sort, a VHS roll, a vortex, a luma key, flying tiles, shattering glass, a turning cube, dust on the wind, folding blinds. I is a film made with code: one journey from a molecule to the deep field, through the body, the city, the wild and the cosmos (a double helix, a radiolarian, plankton, a cell field, a neural web, a body on an MRI screen that dives into its brain, where a galaxy turns, a breath map, a body radar, a scramble crossing, a rail tunnel, a metro map, the commute, a terrain flight, a canopy, a murmuration, ridgelines, orbits, a galaxy, a deep field, warp), each picture handing over inside the next, never cutting, and every one answering the music in its own way. II: a body radar, a body MRI, a neural web, a breath map. III: a scramble crossing, a rail tunnel, a metro map whose routes draw themselves, cross and rub out, the commute. IV: a Mandelbulb, the Mandelbrot set in three dimensions, as a city: its surface rolls inward and it revolves as time runs, faster with the bass. Its cities are clusters of spikes of light rooted on its surface, towers downtown, each pulsing with its own part of the music; roads grow out of them like mycelium, with traffic pulsing along; it boils with the bass, a hit melts it back toward a sphere, knocks the cities down and cuts the roads back, and all of it grows again; a crosshair locks on its anomalies and the ring round it keeps the clock. V: ridgelines, a terrain flight, a murmuration, a dense wood. VI: a deep field, a galaxy, orbits, warp. Between two universes the pictures blend: up the band they zoom out, powers of ten; the others melt, scan or burn through. GLITCH, ECHO, REVERB and POLY each have several looks; each key's voice leaves its own mark on the glass. Drag on the screen to pan or turn, scroll to zoom, double-click to reset.
- Voices
- Transmissions from 1963–1972 arrive on their own. The room flickers, the picture tears, and the words that matter land huge on the screen. In music mode a voice sometimes retunes the machine as it arrives: the part keys change and EXTRAPOLATION turns, while the screen says RECALCULATING.
- Screen
- Tap BIO, FILMS, SOUND or CONTACT, on the screen or on the lit keys under it (HOME, the first key, brings the menu back); the open section's key stays pressed in. FILMS is the machine's own screen: the map, or music mode while the switch is up. SOUND throws the switch up into music mode; CONTACT prints a card from the slit in the front; click the paper to pull it out. Escape returns home.
Switch off cinematic startup for a calmer introduction with less motion. The choice is remembered on this device.
Tab moves between controls. Enter or Space activates buttons. F1 opens this guide.