Week 5 Studio: Feedback and decay

Giving the instrument a state that keeps moving on its own, so it's a small system and not just a picture machine

22 March 2027

Before the studio#

Bring a build where every change on screen is a direct, immediate response to input. That’s the thing you’re about to break.

In the studio#

Add a clock. Ink that dries out unless topped up, a charge that drains, a mark that fades if it isn’t renewed — something that keeps changing whether or not anyone is touching the instrument, and that the constraint from last week now has to answer to. This is the week instruments stop being reactive surfaces and start being small systems with their own state, which is also the week they start failing in genuinely new ways: watch for the failure mode where your decay term and your input handling fight each other for the same number.

Afterwards#

Leave the instrument alone for thirty seconds without touching it and watch what it does. If nothing happens, the decay isn’t wired to anything visible yet.