Monorepo for Aesthetic.Computer
aesthetic.computer
refactor: notepat paper voice — first-person consistent, remove \"this paper\" frame
Changed abstract: removed \"This paper traces\" and \"We frame\" constructions to direct \"I trace\" and direct assertion. Also fixed intro: replaced \"This paper takes\" with \"I take\". Applied VOICE.md guidelines for personal clarity and confidence.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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papers/arxiv-notepat/notepat.tex
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papers/arxiv-notepat/notepat.tex
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\begin{quote}
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\small\noindent\textbf{Abstract.}
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\texttt{notepat} began in June 2024 as a 200-line chromatic keyboard sketch inside \ac{}~\citep{scudder2026ac}. Over 401 commits and 20 months it grew to 7{,}903 lines in the browser and 987 lines on bare metal, accumulating five waveform types, room reverb, analog pressure sensitivity, a bare-metal Linux port that boots as PID~1, a branded domain (\texttt{notepat.com}), a dedicated test harness, an alpha Ableton Live device, a VST3 plugin scaffold, and six derivative pieces. This paper traces that growth: what \texttt{notepat} started as, what features it gained, what infrastructure it pulled into existence, and how a single piece came to function as the strategic front door of a larger creative computing system. We frame this trajectory as a \emph{political economy of a piece}---the feedback loops between a piece's growing capabilities, the platform decisions it motivates, and the resources it attracts over time.
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\texttt{notepat} began in June 2024 as a 200-line chromatic keyboard sketch inside \ac{}~\citep{scudder2026ac}. Over 401 commits and 20 months it grew to 7{,}903 lines in the browser and 987 lines on bare metal, accumulating five waveform types, room reverb, analog pressure sensitivity, a bare-metal Linux port that boots as PID~1, a branded domain (\texttt{notepat.com}), a dedicated test harness, an alpha Ableton Live device, a VST3 plugin scaffold, and six derivative pieces. I trace that growth: what \texttt{notepat} started as, what features it gained, what infrastructure it pulled into existence, and how a single piece came to function as the strategic front door of a larger creative computing system. This trajectory is a \emph{political economy of a piece}---the feedback loops between a piece's growing capabilities, the platform decisions it motivates, and the resources it attracts over time.
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\end{quote}
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\vspace{0.5em}
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\section{Introduction}
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Creative coding platforms are typically evaluated at the system level: language design, editor affordances, community size~\citep{reas2007processing,mccarthy2015p5js,resnick2009scratch}. Even within digital musical instrument research, the unit of analysis is usually the instrument class or interaction paradigm rather than the evolution of a single artifact over years~\citep{magnusson2010designing,marquez2018dmi}. This paper takes a narrower and longer lens: one piece---\texttt{notepat}---inside \ac{}, studied across 20 months of active development.
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Creative coding platforms are typically evaluated at the system level: language design, editor affordances, community size~\citep{reas2007processing,mccarthy2015p5js,resnick2009scratch}. Even within digital musical instrument research, the unit of analysis is usually the instrument class or interaction paradigm rather than the evolution of a single artifact over years~\citep{magnusson2010designing,marquez2018dmi}. I take a narrower and longer lens: one piece---\texttt{notepat}---inside \ac{}, studied across 20 months of active development.
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\texttt{notepat} is a melodic keyboard instrument. It is directly addressable as \texttt{aesthetic.computer/notepat} and through the branded domain \texttt{notepat.com}. As of March 2026, it is the most complex piece in the system, the default boot piece on bare-metal hardware, and the primary subject of performance testing infrastructure. None of this was planned at the outset. The instrument grew, and the platform grew around it.
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