Heydon Pickering: Making HTML Make Music
The element was available in 1995. We had to wait another 15 years for . There’s still little we can do with sound in HTML, except play, or stop, something already recorded. Actually sampling, signal processing, and sequencing sound means either raw-dogging the Web Audio API or using a monolithic library like Tone.js.
In any case, you find yourself writing a lot of JavaScript and not much music. Heydon wants to be able to design sound like they write prose: hypertextually. Pursuing this has become a multi-year obsession, and it’s revived their 20-year-long passion for the web. Along the way, they've discovered that a 2KB custom element can do as much as £200 of hardware. This way to the rabbit hole!
Heydon has spent 20 or so years working with the web. They've authored and illustrated multiple books, designed some experimental variable fonts, and produced some ambitious, often contentious videos. They love to design with black and white. Colors are confusing.