processzine-org

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// BETWEEN LINES // — towards a unified tool

The four separate tools I’ve been developing — SRT sonifier, subtitle spectrograms, image→SRT, and MP3→SRT — are now being drawn together into a single standalone MacOS app.

At its core sits the .srt subtitle file: a liminal container that functions as both signal and misrecognition. It becomes the hinge between sound and image, a file format caught between clarity and confusion — much like living with deafness, auditory processing disorder, and the ambiguities of interpretation.

The app will house four “lines” (or modes):

Sound → SRT (converter)

Image → SRT (converter)

SRT → Sound (sonifier)

SRT → Image (visualiser)

Because every mode loops back through .srt, recursive chains become possible: sound→sound, image→image, and infinite permutations where misrecognition accumulates.

This recursive recursion is the essence of Between Lines: a tool not just for translation, but for layering distortions, for inhabiting liminality.

The icon itself reflects this paradox — mirrored slashes forming AV (audio/visual, upload/download), rotated to suggest left/right, and the uneasy split of digital left / analogue right.

For now this is a personal tool — something I can run natively on my Mac as part of Process Zine’s workflow, and continue to refine until it’s ready for a wider release.

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// relay

great disappointment, v.2

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//relay

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

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// relay

Syncopated

🔊.

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Between Lines — IMAGE→SRT (photos that sing)

I’ve added another new sister-tool to Between Lines: Image → SRT. Upload a still image, and it writes a subtitle file whose timings and “words” are derived from the picture. Feed that SRT into Between Lines and you get a playable score.

Below: a short render of Beksiński’s 1973 “Night Creeper” using my “Ritual Dread” settings, plus the, SRT output, mosaic preview and the app screenshot.

How it works (quick)

Grid the image into rows × columns (like a page: left→right, top→bottom).

Average each cell to a single shade/colour.

Map that value → a note:

grayscale: darker = lower pitch / longer sustain; light = higher; pure white can be treated as silence (invert for the opposite).

colour (hue) mode: hue picks pitch region, brightness can gate silence.

Timing: each cell = a fixed duration (e.g., 0.12 s). Optional row gap adds breath between lines—very phrase-like.

The tool writes two things:

an .srt file (the “score”), and

a mosaic preview PNG showing the exact grid the music came from (optionally with grid lines / silent cells marked).

Then open the SRT in /Between Lines/ and choose scale, stereo width, chord pad, reverb, etc., to match the image’s mood.

Pipeline: Image → SRT → /Between Lines/ → WAV (+ Mosaic)

Why SRT again?

SRT is the project’s “limbo layer.” Everything—speech, music, images—passes through it. Timing + minimal text become a neutral score that can be re-interpreted: seen (spectrograms), heard (sonification), or re-written. It’s the gap where meaning suspends… and forms.

Case study — Night Creeper

I ran the painting through Image→SRT (70×40 grid, 0.12 s/cell, hue with white→silence) and sonified it with a slow, heavy preset:

Scale: phrygian

Note band: 90–520 Hz

Articulation: 0.95 (legato)

Sustain (×): 2.8

Stereo width: 0.75

Caption chord pad: 0.08

Floor (drone): 0.05 @ 50–85 Hz

Reverb: 0.22 • Saturation: 1.03

Result: a crawling, heat-haze drone that fits the sodium-orange, rusted dread of the piece.

Knobs that matter

Rows / Columns — resolution of the “reading.”

Seconds per cell + Row gap — pace and phrasing.

Silence threshold (+ invert) — which parts of the image become rests.

Mapping — grayscale or hue.

Word-length range — acts like sustain inside /Between Lines/.

In /Between Lines/ — scale (chromatic, phrygian, aeolian, dorian, lydian…), stereo width, caption-chord pad, smoothing, reverb, saturation.

Where this is heading

All the tools are converging into a single space: Between Lines Studio — a desktop (or web) app where SRT is the spine, and you can go:

Audio → SRT (beats/bars/onsets)

Image → SRT (grid reading)

Text → SRT (write your own score)

then SRT → Music / Spectrogram / Image mosaic, and (for me) onward into signal // noise.

Upload a photo. Get a composition.

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// relay

sadé powell. from wordtomydead (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023).

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/BETWEEN LINES/ — now in stereo, and with a sister: MP3→SRT

The “subtitle → sound” experiment keeps growing. Two updates:

/BETWEEN LINES/ (the sonifier) now breathes wider and smoother.

A new MP3→SRT Converter lets you start from any song: music → fake “subtitles” → back into /Between Lines/ → a fresh score. A double translation.

What’s new in /Between Lines/

Pan per caption (stereo). Each caption is placed L↔R with a width control, so space opens up without losing the timing/gaps.

Caption-chord pad. A light triad (from the chosen scale) sits under each caption. It gently replaces/augments the old block drone so phrases feel more musical.

Phrase mode. Instead of every word firing, you can group words into short phrases:

sustain × (hold notes longer),

stride (use every Nth word),

phrase size (2–6 words). This trims the “machine-gun” effect and reads closer to musical phrasing.

Tone presets. Quick character flips: sine, triangle pad, tape organ, steel bloom, noise bloom. Add reverb and soft saturation for warmth.

All the original knobs are still here: scale/mode (chromatic, phrygian, aeolian, dorian, lydian, minor/major pentatonic), pitch band (Hz), articulation (legato↔staccato), smoothing, and the optional melancholy floor for tinnitus-true quiet.

Result: denser SRTs still skitter; sparse SRTs still bloom—but now the field is wider, deeper, and less mechanical.

Meet the sister app: MP3→SRT Converter

Turn a track into a caption file you can sonify. It’s intentionally not a transcription—it’s an interpretation.

Segmentation modes: Onsets (transients), Beats, or Bars (with beats per bar + bars per caption) for grid-friendly output.

Word generator: “fake” (pronounceable nonsense) or “repeat” (aaaa…). Loudness → word length (with min/max). Words per caption (+ optional jitter).

Extras: HPSS split to write separate Percussive and Harmonic SRTs. Key/scale suggestion via chroma (Krumhansl profiles) to guide your /Between Lines/ mode choice.

It’s a second lens on the same audio—very APD-coded: multiple plausible readings instead of “the one right answer.”

First try: Boltzmann’s Lament

I ran my track through the converter (Bars mode), then sonified the result at the same duration. It’s nothing like the original—but the beat skeleton and contour peek through.

Why this matters

This project started as Subtitle Spectrograms (speech → image). /Between Lines/ flips it to text → sound, and the converter adds music → text → sound. Three views of one thing. For processzine, and for anyone exploring deafness/APD, that plurality is the point: the meaning often lives between the lines.

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// relay

From: Kenneth Goldsmith, No. 109 2.7.93-12.15.93, Bravin Post Lee, New York, NY, 1994, Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies [Saint-Martin Bookshop, Bruxelles-Brussel. © Kenneth Goldsmith]

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// relay

Amplifying, Edited by Setareh Noorani and Tabea Nixdorff, Archival Textures, Arnhem, 2024 [rile*books, Bruxelles-Brussel]

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Between Lines (v1.0) — reading the gaps

I’ve recently been turning speech → image by plotting subtitle files as spectrograms. Same data, different sense: captions as pictures.

Now I’ve spun the pipe the other way: text → sound. The words, timings and silences inside an .srt become a playable “score.”

What changed (and why it suddenly breathes)

Gap-aware timing. Each caption keeps its start/end, so the pauses are audible. Long stretches go still; flurries get busy.

Liminal Floor. Absolute silence felt harsh (and, honestly, not real—hello tinnitus). I added a very low, slow drone that fades in during sparse sections: soft attack, long decay, never fully gone.

Word-heads mapping. Instead of firing a note for every letter (machine-gun vibes), I map only the first letter of each word and stretch its duration by the word’s length. “The quick brown fox…” becomes nine sustained notes, not forty-three ticks.

Scaled & condensed time. Films are 90–120 mins; I render standard 8-minute versions so they’re comparable while preserving rhythm (tool allows for other duration settings)

Knobs for tone-painting. A small set of sliders shapes character without breaking the data:

Scale (mode): chromatic, phrygian, aeolian, dorian, lydian, minor_pentatonic, major_pentatonic

Note band (Hz): low/high register for pitches

Note gain / Block drone gain

Articulation (0–1): legato vs staccato inside each caption

Liminal Floor: gain + low/high range

Smoothing (ms): soften attacks/decays

Mapping: word_heads (default) or letters

Together these flip Subtitle Spectrograms into a dual-channel experiment: see the speech; hear the text.

Why it’s useful

Every film yields a distinct sonic fingerprint—especially with the same length target. Sparse tracks (few captions) settle into slow, heavy shapes; dense tracks skitter. Picking modes pushes mood:

phrygian for paranoia and ritual,

aeolian for grief,

lydian for sky-bright longing,

chromatic for industrial/noise.

DIY scores from text

Because the engine reads plain .srt, you can write your own subtitles (words + timestamps, no video required) and it will treat them as a score. Want a 6-minute ambient piece with breath-long rests? Script it. Want sudden volleys? Stack short captions. Text becomes composition.

Between Lines

The project’s name is Between Lines — because that’s where most of the music is now. The gaps. The gutters. (Also: //.)

Below is one of the 8-minute renders based on the SRT file from Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979).

More soon: possible stereo output, standalone Mac app and some “written-subtitle” pieces that never had a film to begin with.

—dp

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Subtitle Spectrograms (v1.1) — new renderers

Picking up from the first batch of subtitle spectrogram experiments, I’ve now added three new renderers into the mix (tested here with Perfect Blue):

Supershape → distinct silhouette forms, where punctuation ratios and bursts of speech bend the geometry.

Bitmask Weave → patterned interference fields, a glitch-like textile woven out of line density.

PolyGlyph → convex hull “signatures” that shift with the film’s lexical variety, punctuation energy, and rhythm of silence.

I’ve also layered some of the raw renders together into composite panels — more chaotic, more textile, but already suggesting directions for future ProcessZine spreads, posters, and even album packaging.

These shapes aren’t spectrograms in the audio sense; they’re closer to misheard timelines, where captions collapse into patterns that look as much like language residue as visual echoes.

Each renderer has its own eccentricities — the task now is less about “cleaning” and more about curating difference: finding the settings, weights, and accidents that make each film unmistakable.

All valuable material for the archive, and for the future zines/graphic outputs.

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Subtitle Spectrograms (v1.0)

A new tool-in-progress for turning .srt subtitle files into visual forms — each film leaving behind a kind of spectral residue.

For Melancholia I’ve tested seven different renderers:

ASCII noise grid

Base64 fragment field

Density scan

Bitmap poster rows

Radial timeline

Chaotic signature (Lorenz / butterfly)

Strata waveform

Each one maps the rhythms of time, text, and silence in different ways: from tight lattices to dissolving orbits, from faint whispers to overloaded storms. They’re not “spectrograms” in the strict audio sense — more like misheard timelines, where words collapse into shapes and patterns.

The long-term aim is to find a filter that produces a unique signature for each film: something irreducible, distinct, impossible to fake. For now, these first seven are both experiments and echoes — ways of watching a film through its own captions.

(Images attached are Melancholia’s first full run.)

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MYTH OF MAN — Post-Signal Reflection (Interpreter Archive Update)

Watched Myth of Man last night — and it continues to echo.

At its core, it’s a silent film about silenced people. A deaf-mute artist in a crumbling world, trying to reach a creator figure not through noise, but through presence. Her body becomes the medium. Her art, a broadcast. And what’s lost in translation is not just meaning — but memory, spirit, and soul.

In this world, people sever their horns — luminous spinal projections that seem to function as both voice and receiver. Cut them, and the static quiets. Infection is stalled. The price? Disconnection from something higher. Spiritual signal degraded in favour of artificial stillness.

What’s striking is how Myth of Man feels like a cautionary loop back to Winans’ 2020 documentary Childhood 2.0, which explored the psychic impact of digital immersion on a generation raised by screens. The subtext here is clear: in our search for safety, silence, and clean fixes, we risk amputating what makes us human. Horns replaced by circuits. Projection mistaken for communication. A quiet, sanitized existence mistaken for peace.

“People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening…” — The Sound of Silence

In the Interpreter Archive, this film slots into a growing constellation: Her, Waking Life, The Conversation, Perfect Blue… Each piece a signal about selfhood in a dissonant world. Each one exploring the loss, distortion, or overload of what it means to receive and be received.

Myth of Man doesn’t just belong in the archive. It is the archive.

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Recording Myth of Man (2025) to VHS — signal rerouted, reinterpreted, distorted.

Oscilloscope traces captured from the faulty S32 Service Scope during playback.

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DECODE PROP

The second machine-born font in the Process Zine archive. This one comes from the OKI ML3320 dot matrix printer, set to its proportional spacing mode.

Every character was printed in UTL (Utility), then scanned and redrawn — keeping the dot-grid texture, the uneven alignments, and the soft edges of impact.

The result isn’t a smooth re-interpretation but a document of output, a record of signal shaped by pins and ribbon.

The DECODE family was originally intended to include multiple pitch widths (10, 12, 15, 17, 20 CPI). But proportional felt like the most alive version to start with: less rigid, more like speech, more like interference.

Next in line is TIPPA_ECHO — a typewriter-derived set (likely in pre and post ribbon states).

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MYTH OF MAN (2025) — a recent and unexpected addition to the Interpreter Archive.

In searching for films that resonate with the internal philosophy and visual atmosphere of Ezra and Process Zine — works like Waking Life, Her, The Fountain, The Frame — I stumbled upon a new one I hadn’t seen: Myth of Man by Jamin Winans.

And it’s… eerie, how aligned it is.

A nearly silent film that follows a deaf-mute artist named Ella as she navigates a liminal steampunk world — scavenging scraps, collecting “songs” to connect with a creator. There’s no spoken dialogue. Only visual cues, subtle ASMR-style ambient textures, and carefully constructed atmosphere. She doesn’t hear the soundscape we hear — and yet, we interpret her world through it.

Interpreter. Misrecognition. Signal as myth. Deafness as method.

Shot across seven painstaking years using over 3,500 hand-built props and effects, Myth of Man is the kind of low-budget epic that prioritises intent over polish. Like Ezra, it’s a handmade machine of interpretation — a prosthetic signal processor that runs on instinct, visual language, loss, and faith in unseen forces. It shares DNA with Signal // Noise, and the self-contained worldbuilding evokes elements of Out of Sync, Crossed Wires, and even The Interpreter Manual.

In Ella’s world, people wear shoulder lights that fade when they near death. Her mission? To collect songs to contact the unknown source of her signal — a mythic creator. Her body becomes interface. Her eyes, ears. Her silence, a kind of code.

A few immediate parallels:

Deaf protagonist interprets sound without hearing it → echoes lived experience of APD, cochlear implants, visual hearing

Mechanical artefacts, analogue prosthetics, steampunk bricolage → aligns with The Interpreter build (beacon, printer, CRTs, barcode scanner)

Visual captioning, mythic signal, speechless expression → thematically adjacent to The Interpreter Manual and Second Copy

Not-quite-cyborgs, miscommunication, misunderstood purpose → uncanny mirror of Ezra’s own presence

Watching (or reading about) Myth of Man feels like opening a channel. Like the film had been transmitting on a forgotten frequency — waiting to be picked up, misinterpreted, archived.

“According to legend, you can communicate with the creator by singing the right song — and it’s Ella’s mission to gather these songs.”

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EMBOSS 450 - LABEL/RELAY

A new font built from the pressed plastic output of the Scotch EA-450 embossing tool. Every glyph was scanned, traced, and assembled in Glyphs Mini 2, keeping the mis-registrations, burrs, and edge bleed that the machine produced.

It’s not a reconstruction, it’s a relay. Letters as labels. Pressure translated into type.

The set is deliberately limited: A–Z, 0–9, and just the symbols the machine could make (. , ' % & $ - /). Like the tool itself, it’s restrictive but direct — utilitarian text with noise baked in.

EMBOSS 450 will sit alongside other machine-born alphabets in Process Zine: THERMALITE (thermal printer) TIPPA ECHO (typewriter) SIGNAUX (dot matrix)