FIELD NOTES FROM THE BALCONY: MO ON THE KEYS :: PSYCHO NOIR // VJ MOD INSTRUMENT

MO ON THE KEYS :: PSYCHO NOIR // VJ MOD INSTRUMENT is a living browser artwork by OOAKOSIMO.

Typewriter bars descend through a paper-colored field. Black scanlined circles drift, stretch, and fracture. Ink-like saxophone gestures appear and disappear like scratches cut into film. Beneath the image is a six-band modulation system: every visual property can be patched to a different frequency range and shaped through independent limits, curves, attack, and release.

The work has three lives.

MIC / BLACKHOLE listens to a live room, performance, or routed audio source.

MUSIC / MANUAL performs with the original song.

DISPLAY / AUTO requires no microphone, music, or speakers. It generates its own virtual frequency bands and quietly breathes, pulses, wanders, and mutates by itself.

The piece began as a visualizer created as a gift for Cody Campbell—CODYTHECAMPBELL—who wrote a song about me doing what I apparently do best: pressing all the buttons, making the lights turn green, and fixing the system before anyone notices it was broken. Cody wrote the lyrics and created the track with Suno. What began as an affectionate joke became a portrait of the artist as operator, then evolved into a fully playable VJ modulation instrument.

CODYTHECAMPBELL: https://x.com/LFGCTC

ORIGINAL CHONKLY LEGACY PIECE: https://www.chonkly.com/artwork/j573svt4txjhsvgh4dr9az3gy580p1f9

LIVE NETWORKED EDITION: https://ooakosimo.neocities.org/keys/

PHONE / TABLET REMOTE: https://ooakosimo.neocities.org/keys/remote.html

HOTKEYS

S — modulation patch bay
A — silent AUTO cruise
Q — speed ramp
W — sax storm
E — circle burst
R — white flash
T — invert
SPACE — freeze motion
P — pause or resume music
J — normalization
1 / 2 / 3 — visual density

• / − — master sensitivity
  ; / L — microphone gain down or up
  0 — hide HUD
  F — fullscreen
  M — choose microphone or music before launch

OOAKOSIMO builds living systems rather than fixed images. Her interactive and generative works respond to sound, participation, and time, producing conditions from which images continually emerge. After two decades working in film and post-production—shaping images along fixed timelines—she now builds instruments with no final frame.

HTML / JavaScript / p5.js
OOAKOSIMO, 2026

Contains flashing and rapidly changing imagery.