Now in its final hours on Kickstarter, Time Machine is a unique and essential Eurorack rendition of the classic multi-tap delay. And it’s also the project of a growing group of queer inventors, from the co-creator of the original Dark Sky – meaning Olivia is now returning to Kickstarter after 12 years.
The idea is so elegantly produced here that you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d seen it already – it’s just one of those designs that needs to exist. The project is gladly well past its goal but that means there’s still time to get in on a Time Machine module (US$335) which is slated to ship in December.
That stereo in, stereo out module is simply beautiful in design: eight separate taps as faders marked by time division, easy time, feedback, and “reverb” knobs (as big silver knob caps), and full CV control of time and feedback plus clock input. (The reverb knob actually controls amount of temporal smearing between taps.) 22HP, 30mm.
More on what it does:
It has its own character and color. It has an expansive range that makes it possible to space the taps several seconds from each other while also letting you make the delays short enough to enable flange, comb filters, and Karplus–Strong.
Listen:
It’s also a perfect chance to check in on Olivia Artz Modular the project. So yes, not a module, you can turn back time to Dark Sky in 2012 on Kickstarter, the app that remade weather apps. Flash forward to 2023, and Olivia has built a new collective of music making wonders – so if you’ve got no cash for modules now, you can always send 10EUR or just join the Discord to keep in touch!
Olivia Artz Modular is a collective of trans and gender non-conformant people who are making things together. OAM is Kate & Olivia Artz, Marcy Artz-Skylark, and Eris Fairbanks. OAM is everyone working on projects with us. Sometimes we design and build something ourself, like Uncertainty. Sometimes we build and distribute someone else’s dream, like Teletouch. Join us on Discord or send us an email.
And there are some great projects here:
Uncertainty is a probability-driven gate/trigger processor by default, powered by open-source firmware. That open firmware supports coding in C++, Python, and Go, which can already transform it into a VU meter that drives gates – just because you can. Olivia’s daughter Marcy Artz-Skylark did the artwork, and it was loosely inspired by Émilie Gillet’s modules.
There’s also Teletouch, “an expressive touch instrument invented by Non-Verbal Poetry, a witch living on a boat in Scotland.” This began as a design for the monome teletype and norns, and indeed addresses those device’s absence of expressive touch controls. But I see no reason why it couldn’t be used for other stuff, too, actually – you get note, pressure, mode-switching, triggering, and MIDI. I actually don’t know how I missed this, or I think I saw it and forgot it more likely, but I’m really keen to try it out.
It’s nice to see all these threads come together – and maybe somehow in the organic flurries of gates and delay taps, there’s a feeling of shifting weather. But as Olivia tells CDM, it’s important that she’s now got an updated and correct credit on Dark Sky and that these identities are, well, patched. She writes: “It means a lot to connect the me that made that app with the me that builds hardware now. I just keep making interfaces for exploring time. Now with a growing family of queer creators.”
Go check the Kickstarter, and hope we’re hearing some delays from some of you in December!