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Lab

Small builds, interactive experiments, and prototypes that help me work through ideas in public. Some are playful. Some are pointed. The common thread is making the idea tangible.

Featured Projects

Featured project

Two Ableton MIDI Tools You Can Have

Max for Live Music Tools · 2026

Rhythm Dice RD-011 and Cymbal Phrase CP-004 turn bounded musical rules into MIDI inside Ableton Live 12. Both compiled devices and their source packages are free under the MIT License.

The report covers the rhythm and cymbal research behind the tools, the narrow Live interface that forced better decisions, the failures that had to be fixed, and the exact installation path for using them in a MIDI clip.

2 free .amxd devicesMIT source includedLive 12 install guide
Read the report and download the tools ↗nomadjames.com/lab/ableton-midi-tools
Featured project

Cabinet of Working Oddities

100-Page Interactive HTML Experiment · 2026

One hundred standalone browser experiments: games, instruments, simulations, data visualizations, generative art, editorial systems, control panels, and stranger things that resist a clean category.

The collection started with a plan-first constraint: every page needed its own visual mechanic, layout, palette, type treatment, and way to respond. The gallery loads all 100 as live thumbnails, and each experiment opens as a complete offline-capable page.

100 standalone pageszero external dependenciesmouse, keyboard, audio + time
Open the cabinet ↗nomadjames.com/working-oddities
Featured project

FM Scroll Signal

Interactive Audio Prototype · 2026

A native-scroll journey where one FM patch drives both the animated field and an opt-in Web Audio instrument. Scroll changes the composition; movement, taps, and drags bend it temporarily.

The experiment asks whether native scroll can make technical frequency-modulation relationships visible, audible, playable, and entertaining without turning the page into a conventional synthesizer.

shared visual + audio patchnative scroll + gestureopt-in Web Audio
Open FM Scroll Signal ↗nomadjames.com/lab/scroll-signal
Featured artwork

Nocturne for Six Orbits

Generative Audiovisual Artwork · 2026

An endless generative cosmos that turns navigation into composition. Drag steers through a deterministic 3D galaxy, scrolling changes velocity and sound, and celestial bodies ring as the aim beam crosses them.

Built through repeated live testing to see how far one self-contained HTML file could go. Every body moves, the ambient score evolves at rest, and click-drag sweeps generate body-derived tones while the wheel drives flight and sound.

continuous 3D flightbody-derived sounddrag + wheel responsive
Enter the Nocturne ↗nomadjames.com/nocturne-for-six-orbits
Featured project

Groove Dice

Interactive Rhythm Instrument · 2026

A browser-based drum sequencer that turns rule-bound rhythmic research into grooves you can roll, edit, humanize, and export.

I wanted to make the difference between randomness and groove visible. Stable anchors hold the beat together while density, feel, timing, velocity, and seeded variation change what happens around them.

8 groove familieslive velocity + timingMIDI + WAV export
Open Groove Dice ↗nomadjames.com/groove-dice
Featured project

Claude Could Write MIDI. It Could Not Read It.

Human-AI Music Lab · 2026

A forked Ableton MCP grew from 22 tools to 52 so Claude Code could inspect its own work instead of guessing. The resulting timing grammar replaced random humanization with explicit musical relationships.

The lab records what changed in the tooling, what changed in the arrangement, and what still cannot be claimed without an audio-return path.

22 → 52 tools28-note grammar proofJames remained the ears
Open the Ableton MCP case study ↗nomadjames.com/lab/ableton-mcp-timing-grammar
Featured project

Bad Trips: Grok Video Smoke Test

AI Video Evaluation Artifact · 2026

Ten deliberately difficult surreal prompts, ten completed Grok Imagine Video clips, and every prompt reproduced beside its output.

James selected the test shape and reviewed the outputs. The record focuses on prompt adherence, temporal coherence, embedded audio, visual variety, content-policy handling, and retry behavior.

10 prompts10 completed videosverbatim prompts
Open the Bad Trips record ↗nomadjames.com/lab/bad-trips
Featured project

Memory Governance Lab

Interactive AI Systems Lab · 2026

A click-through examination of the gap between retrieving a relevant sentence and having permission to act on it.

The lab follows one claim through retrieval, expiry, supersession, and a proposed authority-to-act gate. It makes the failure mode visible instead of hiding it inside architecture copy.

retrieval finds evidencelifecycle retires claimsauthority remains explicit
Open the memory governance lab ↗nomadjames.com/lab/memory-governance-final
Featured project

LTX-2.3 Fever Dreams on a 2080

Local AI Video Lab · 2026

Eight short video loops made by pushing LTX-2.3 through a deliberately stupid escalation ladder: mandala, shrine, mineshaft, teeth cathedral, basement moth choir, organ clock, sludge court, worm university.

Eight strange local video loops produced on a consumer RTX 2080 SUPER through a disciplined low-VRAM workflow: quantized model, conservative resolution, supervised workers, and ffmpeg loop finishing.

8 local loopsLTX-2.3 GGUFRTX 2080 SUPER
Open the fever dreams ↗nomadjames.com/lab/ltx-2080-fever-dreams
Featured project

RandyCamp Lo-Fi Glitch Lab

Local AI Image System · 2026

A local image-generation lab built around an 8GB RTX 2080 SUPER. I used five lightweight diffusion models to turn 50 source stills into 500 glitch variations for the RandyCamp visual deck.

The point was practical: find out whether a small local card could generate enough useful visual material for Clipcycle without renting a cloud GPU or waiting on a remote queue. The page documents the build, the hardware constraints, the timing, and the full result set.

500 generated stills8GB local GPUClipcycle-ready assets
Open the Lo-Fi Glitch Lab ↗nomadjames.com/lab/randycamp-lofi-glitch
Featured project

Micro-Museum of Broken Interfaces

Interactive UX Critique · 2026

An interactive portfolio piece that turns UX critique into something you can actually feel. Instead of writing about bad interface patterns, it lets you use them, experience why they fail, and compare them directly to redesigns that fix the underlying problem.

The museum covers 15 infamous interface failures drawn from real products, FTC complaints, and dark patterns research. Each exhibit follows the same structure: experience the broken version, read the principle-level analysis, then see a better version side by side. The point is simple: critique is cheap, redesign is not.

15 exhibitsbroken pattern → analysis → fixstandalone project
Open the Micro-Museum ↗nomadjames.com/micro-museum
Featured artwork

my horizons

Interactive Artwork · 2026

A preserved creative-coding composition translated into six animated color worlds: the original plus five Warhol-style variations. It keeps the geometry and tension of the first piece, then lets color do the emotional remixing.

The page behaves like one artwork instead of six disconnected sketches. Hover over any horizon to wake it up, move the mouse to bend the atmosphere, and click to pull a single variation into focus before dropping back into the full field.

original + five variationshover and click responsivestandalone project
Open my horizons ↗nomadjames.com/my-horizons

Live SystemsClarence public system-status snapshot

Updated Aug 25, 2026, refreshed reviewed public snapshot

online
Live System Metrics

Clarence Pulse

Public-safe system pulse showing live knowledge metrics, system health, and architecture signals from Clarence.

View System Pulse →

Sketches

Algorithmic Sol LeWitt

Inspired by Sol LeWitt's instruction-based wall drawings: rotating nested squares over a field of random geometry. Clickable: click to pause or resume, and move the mouse vertically to change the speed.

p5.js · 2025clickable · click to pause/resume · mouse Y = speed

Morphing Kaleidoscopic Grid

Moving rectangles bounce around the canvas and every 5 seconds deposit a nested copy of themselves onto a persistent layer. Clickable: click to pause or resume the accumulation.

p5.js · 2025clickable · click to pause/resume

Nested Grid Echoes

A drifting grid where each cell slowly accumulates recursive color blocks over time. Motion stays temporary. The nested geometry persists. Not clickable: this one just evolves on its own.

p5.js · 2025not clickable · watch it evolve every 5 seconds

Chromatic Crossfield

A field of moving diagonal crosses with noise-driven stroke weights and a jittering square overlay. Loud, geometric, and unstable in a good way. Clickable: click to pause or resume.

p5.js · 2025clickable · click to pause/resume

Spectrum Cross Drift

One hundred full-frame diagonal crosses drift horizontally and vertically while Perlin noise thickens and thins each stroke. It feels like a CRT test pattern learning how to breathe. Clickable: click to pause or resume.

p5.js · 2025clickable · click to pause/resume

Virtual Wallpaper Redux

A speaker-like wallpaper grid of ellipses and nested rectangles under a command-heavy mantra. Clickable: click to randomize the color and cell scale, and press-hold to trigger the rotating rectangle behavior.

p5.js · 2025clickable · click to recolor/rescale · press-hold to rotate inner forms

Crimson Noise Dots

A simple but effective hypnotic field: translucent red-pink dots bloom across a black canvas until it feels like afterimages burned into your eyes. Clickable: click to clear the canvas.

p5.js · 2025clickable · click to clear the canvas

Stochastic Shape Storm

A slow-cycling blast of ellipses, rectangles, and triangles over a constantly mutating background. Less composition, more sudden visual weather. Clickable: click to force a fresh random frame.

p5.js · 2025clickable · click to force a new frame

Algorithmic Storytelling

A political satire game about navigating a surveillance state. Sprite-based characters move through procedurally generated environments with sound. Three iterations: from prototype to full narrative arc.

p5.js · 2025arrow keys to move · spacebar to interact

Loop Studies

Ten short motion studies from the current psychedelic clip factory, built from hosted FLUX stills and finished locally. Muted, inline, and looping by default.

Prism Bloom

Radial rainbow bloom with a slow inward pull.

Cathedral Wheel

Stained-glass symmetry with a cooler color rotation.

Spiral Tide

Liquid spiral motion with a brighter magenta-cyan bias.

Mosaic Sun

Tile-like sunburst with a warmer high-contrast finish.

Opal Labyrinth

Iridescent maze energy with a darker jewel-tone drift.

Rosette Current

Electric petal loop with the fastest hue travel in the set.

Glass Flower

Layered stained-glass bloom with a gentler pulse.

Tile Comet

Radial tile burst with a sharper push through the frame.

Ribbon Orbit

Ribbon-like spiral motion with a brighter orbiting palette.

Aurora Emblem

Cool aurora gradients and a slower, calmer turn.

Colliding Scopes Remixes

A second pass on the same ten loops, this time feeding each finished clip into a patched Colliding Scopes kaleidoscope pipeline. Same source set, different folding logic.

Prism Bloom Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Prism Bloom, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Cathedral Wheel Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Cathedral Wheel, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Spiral Tide Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Spiral Tide, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Mosaic Sun Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Mosaic Sun, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Opal Labyrinth Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Opal Labyrinth, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Rosette Current Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Rosette Current, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Glass Flower Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Glass Flower, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Tile Comet Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Tile Comet, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Ribbon Orbit Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Ribbon Orbit, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.

Aurora Emblem Remix

Patched Colliding Scopes remix of Aurora Emblem, using the original loop as a live kaleidoscope source.