Maciej Korsan

POGWAR

generative ambient in the browser; live act at Galeria Arsenał

  • live,
  • sound,
  • web
A black letter “P.” on a cream background with a soft peach glow – the POGWAR logo

POGWAR is my experiment in generative music: ambient that is made on the fly in the browser and sounds a little different every time. Its tagline says what I was going for – in Polish, pogwar is an indistinct murmur of sounds coming from somewhere far away.

I started writing it in July 2023. Tone.js makes the sound, p5.js the visuals, and the tonal library keeps the randomly picked notes inside a chosen scale. Synths weave in and out with instrument samples (bells and horn among them), pink noise run through a slow filter, and bits of speech synthesis.

Live at Arsenał

In summer 2023 Projekt New Hope and Galeria Arsenał ran a series called “Ambient w elektrowni” (Ambient at the Power Station): every other Sunday afternoon on the square in front of the old power station on Elektryczna Street, alongside the exhibition “Duby smalone”. On 20 August I was on the bill with bmunylguns. For that set I built a live version of POGWAR, adding sliders so I could ride the individual layers – bells, horn and noise – instead of just letting the generator run.

The app

A few days after the gig I turned POGWAR into a web app. pogwar.korsi.space has three endless pieces – POGWAR#00, #01 and #02. You can install it on your phone and leave it playing in the background.

What stayed with me

POGWAR was my first real run-in with what mobile browsers will and won’t let you do. One trick I found along the way – a silent MP3 playing on a loop to keep JavaScript alive in the background – came back a few years later in TERAZ.

Sources

pogwar.korsi.space