19.04.06 Monome, the sequencer gesture.
The sequencer, meant as content editing interface, has already gone too far from the cultural nexus with the musical production, becoming a symbolic archetype that structures digital informations. One of the phenomena it has generated is the break of screen boundaries, being then applied for the construction of hardware that embodies its theoretical principles. Monome does it with suppleness. For instance it completely makes up the gesture in the samples' manipulation. The concept of 'keyboard' here is blown up, including the infinite programmability of its two-dimensional elements. These elements evolve from being univocal symbols to being signs, or context sensitive meaningful symbols. In this way the need of a corporeal expression becomes the active processes' interface (similarly to the implementations made by Lemur). This machine indeed frees the adrenaline to instinctively guide the interventions on the sound flow. The sequencer abstract grid becomes then a sort of expanded and re-programmable chessboard, that welcome in its seemingly rigid geometry the smooth fluctuations of the code that holds the sound playing.