James Mason

Setting out the desk…

The 3D desk needs JavaScript. Every project is listed below, and each has a page of its own.This browser draws 3D without graphics acceleration, so the desk would be slow. Every project is listed below.

Section 03 / 06

Instruments & software

The desk

Personal · 2026 · browser prototype

Remote Object

A metal ring hanging in the dark with devices on short chains: an olive circuit-board unit with a lever, a black rotor, a translucent blue device with a lens, a pink key with a triangular prong, a cream handheld with a slider, and the back of a larger dark handheld. A vague shape hangs in the darkness behind.
The ring and its devices in the dark, with the thing in the background behind them.Screenshot of my prototype
The RO-404 handheld held up to the viewer, its dot-matrix screen listing numbered objects with 021 Tuckshop selected, then Trenchcoat, Navvy and Pocket Muck; some entries are scrambled as unresolved.
RO-404's archive: numbered objects, some of them unresolved.Screenshot of my prototype
The RO-404's screen playing Tuckshop by Field Unit: elapsed and total time, a position bar and a waveform drawn from the audio.
Playing Tuckshop, with the waveform drawn from the live audio.Screenshot of my prototype
The P-9 Pronouncer, a cream handheld with a slider and three unmarked buttons, its strip showing the phonemes it is saying, between a pink key and the RO-404.
P-9 saying “Remote Object”, its strip walking along the phonemes it chose.Screenshot of my prototype

A musical keyring in the browser. A metal ring hangs in the dark with eight devices on it, and you handle them rather than read a menu: turn the ring, turn a device until it faces you, then pick it up and use it. One device plays a small archive of Field Unit tracks; the others speak, sing, mangle the sound or, on purpose, do nothing at all.

Try the instrument

Opens the full instrument. It makes no sound until you use a device; Esc puts a device down.

My role

The idea, the devices, the visual language and the direction are mine; it was built with AI coding tools.

  • Original idea, the devices and how they are handled, visual language and direction

RO-404 · Reclamation unit

The handheld, and the only conventional interface on the ring: a dot-matrix screen that browses the archive and plays it, with a waveform drawn from the live audio. It hangs facing away, so you have to turn it round before you can use it.

P-9 · Pronouncer

Type at it and press return, and it says your words out loud, badly, through a formant synthesiser. The strip shows the phonemes it decided your text contained, and the four blades over its speaker open and close with the sounds.

W-2 · Weather unit

A rotor that sings while it spins. Every spin-up makes a new atmosphere, and its level and brightness follow how fast it is actually turning, so the sound winds down with it.

K-4 · Treatment unit

A lever and a plunger. The plunger picks two to four effects at random, from bit reduction, drive, filters, ring modulation, tremolo and delay, and they treat everything the object makes. The picture changes with the sound: bit reduction lowers the render resolution.

S-7 · Sampler

An embroidery hoop, a spool and a cutter. Each drag is one straight stitch; cut the work free and it drifts off into the dark.

A-17, ?? and 31

A key that refuses rather than fake a login, an unlabelled device that watches the cursor, and a token that is not electronic and does nothing. Their purposes are deliberately left open in this prototype.

Outcome

Working browser prototype, September 2026. Contributor accounts and member uploads are planned but not yet implemented.

Credits

  • Implemented with AI coding tools

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