Experiments

Listening isn't looking. A tune wanders while you listen, and each time you look it may snap back to how you last saw it. The quantum Zeno effect, by ear. Day 27.

Signing your news squeezes out the lies, and slant moves in. Whispers, the kirk door and Brandolini's law in a toy Highland glen. Day 26.

A few people choosing their own feed doesn't save the glen, and one alternative feed just moves the gaming. Goodhart's law in a toy Highland glen. Day 25.

A sunrise through rain on a moving car window, rebuilt from a photo's colours. Every raindrop is a small lens and plays the colour it lands on. Day 24.

A text console you play like an instrument: type phrase bell n=8 and the hits swell and fall, loudness, brightness and pitch together. Built on 19 October for Day 23.

On a high-gravity planet the air thins so fast with height that you can hear altitude: climb the tower and the music fades, then loses its bass. Built on 20 October for Day 22.

The GorseSounds logo is an instrument. Sweep through the buds, brush the spines, pluck the stem; pause, and the gorse answers with a phrase made from yours, in the same sounds. It lives at gorsesounds.com, which went live today. Built on 20 and 21 October for Day 21.

Train a dog to come back. Every recall it answers builds trust, every one it ignores costs some, and trust buys freedom: the long line, then off the lead. Lose the trust and the lead goes back on. Built on 19 October for Day 20.

A human and an AI pelican share a tandem on a velodrome. Set who learns faster, and how closely they train against the same tests. Marginal gains make the bike quicker; only both learning together makes it fly.

The game half of the dog walk. Get to the park with a happy dog: wait for the sniffs, reel in when a cyclist comes (the dog will chase it), and try to beat par. Pick your lead before you set off. Made on 19 October to fill Day 18.

Walk a dog with its own ideas. Your footsteps are the beat and the music is the gap between you: dog ahead pushes the notes early, behind lays them back, a sniff is a rest. Each lead is a different way of holding on. Made on 19 October to fill Day 17.

A sorting game you play by ear. Put each thing away where it lives and it sounds its material: glass rings, pans clang, tubs knock. The wrong cupboard clunks, and there's always one thing that fits nowhere.

Two cello notes, no vibrato, and one slider. Pull one a few cents out of tune and the pair starts to pulse. Pull further and it becomes a buzz, then two notes. Find where it feels most alive.

Post something, and two automatic repliers take it from there, each bending the last reply towards its own agenda. Watch the thread drift away from what you said.

Bake a cake with one sense. What's said reaches ears only; what's written reaches eyes only. The cake shows what you missed.

Play into a cello's wolf tone. Near one note the string and the body pull against each other and the note growls. Bow harder, or add an eliminator, and listen to it change.

The same day twice: a message said aloud in one room, written on a note in the other. Speech reaches whoever is near at that moment; writing waits for whoever passes, all day.

Braitenberg vehicles and an urgent person. Nothing is in charge, yet demands either grow or fade depending on how the target and the bystanders are wired. Made 9 October.

Two notes half an octave apart: does the second go up or down? Diana Deutsch's tritone paradox, with a compass of where pitch is high for you. The answer may depend on where you grew up.

A two-block woodcut of a country lane, driven by a phrase score. Floor it and the plates slip out of register; brake hard and the press comes down.

Four hundred people trade at random, starting equal, and a string quartet plays how they share the wealth: richest quarter on first violin, poorest on cello. Wealth buys notes.

Four drum voices with no master clock. Each listens to the others and nudges its own timing towards them; knock one off the beat and hear the band find its groove again.

A five-page talk: how much autonomy does a productivity tool need? Braitenberg's Vehicle 2, an Allium rule, and a live sample week with five vehicles let loose on it. (Shown at the Playgroup, 18 Sep; posted 5 Oct.)

Steer the offbeat with a ship's wheel, from a relaxed reggae skank to driving techno hi-hats. Let go and it drifts back to a tidy, quantised middle.

Four of Braitenberg's vehicles, two sensors wired to two wheels, on a harness that checkpoints, survives a simulated crash and never plays the same ping twice. (Made 24 Sep; posted 3 Oct.)

A synthesised cumbia and a Vasarely-style grid of squares split into four sections, like a band. Each bar of the phrase, one section rises and glows; every new phrase, the sections move round the grid. (Made 21 Feb 2026; posted 2 Oct.)

How much autonomy should an AI agent have? Braitenberg's fourteen vehicles lined up against productivity tools, up to today's agents: what each has to be given, and who holds the initiative. (Made at Playgroup, 18 Sep; posted 1 Oct.)

Braitenberg's fourteen vehicles as a history of personal productivity — one drawn vehicle per rung, from the Filofax (no vehicle at all) to engagement-optimised apps and persistent agents, with what each one senses, does, and has to be granted.

A weekly planner and the automations that could work it, each built as a Braitenberg vehicle — a sensor, a wire, a motor — in a small language you can edit. Step them over a sample week, read the bill for what each one needs, and let selection loose on the wiring.

A screen that pixelates whoever is behind it, turning a person into an avatar. Tune the optics and watch pixels form.