#THE EIGHTH FLOOR

8FL (pronounced either "eight-eff-ell" or "eighth floor") is a livecoding music tracker for the browser.

Its eventual home will be https://8fl.live, but for now catch the prototype at https://x.nas.sr/8fl/.

#Structure

8fl is developed as a monorepo. Each component is isolated, making development and testing easier and also ensuring they can be used outside of 8fl -- none of the components depend on or even "know" about each other

#mex

Compiler for the programming language used to livecode 8fl

#library

Music-focused functions and macros used in mex while livecoding

#engine

The tracker and synthesis engine at the heart of 8fl

#8fl

8fl itself, a browser based web interface that integrates the other components into a livecoding instrument

#History

This is a rewrite of the original 8fl that ran on Renoise and Fennel. Moving to the browser is a way to make the instrument more accessible to others, explore microtonality and richer sequence semantics than I could do in Renoise.

#Name

Work on the tool that would become 8FL/MEX started while I had studio space at Dark Matter on the seventh floor of the [Metropolitan Exchange Building][https://archive.is/Telsj] in downtown Brooklyn. The building, which we affectionately called MEX, was owned by a wonderfully eccentric man named Al Attara who used it to store odds and ends he collected throughout his life while making space for artists to collaborate and do their work.

MEX was full of Al's own projects in various states of completion, perhaps the most impressive of which was the beginnings of an eighth floor to the seven story building. Stairs supported by a bare iron frame extended the building's staircase that should have ended at the roof up into the sky. Abandoned cement mixers waited patiently to be put back to work while loosely fastened tarps flapped in the wind. It is not clear what the ultimate goal was, nor when work started or ended, nor its legality.

The eighth floor is a big dream. The eighth floor is reaching to the next level, practicality be damned. The eighth floor does not have handrails -- you might fall off! The eighth floor is a work in progress, probably forever. The eighth floor is a bad idea that's worth pursuing. The eighth floor should be impossible, and yet there it is.

Al passed away in early 2020 and I moved out of the building along with most of my studiomates shortly after. I am eternally grateful to the experience I had there, and the name of this instrument is a small way to commemorate Al, his big dreams, and the space he made for us in an unforgiving city.

#License

8fl Copyright © 2019-2024 Ramsey Nasser. Shared under the Anti-Capitalist Software License

mex, engine, library code is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain under the terms of the CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL license

#Author's Intent

While the public domain software may legally be used by anyone, it is not for everyone.

This software is the result of a great deal of joyful labor on the part of the author, and it is shared freely in the hope that individuals, students, artists, and worker cooperatives will benefit from its use and study in any capacity, commercial and otherwise. The author made this for you.

It is absolutely not intended for use in service of capital, in pursuit of profit for a minority off the labor of others, or by organizations that differentiate their owners and their workers.

If you own such an organization, know that the author believes that you are a bad person, and that you should step aside and allow your enterprise to be run democratically by your employees with equal stake and say in its management. The author did not made this for you, and holds you in contempt.

If you work for such an organization, know that the author believes that you are being exploited, and that you should start organizing towards converting your workplace into a cooperative or unionizing at the very least. The author is on your side, hopes this software lightens the burden of your labor.

We have nothing to lose but our chains and a better world is possible.