Where mainstream tech ends, experimentation begins. Our Hangar gives ground for alternative interfaces, analog tools, and post-digital design, this is where a new kind of innovation is shaped by the brightest minds. From paper-based thinking to absolute sensorless interaction, we explore the edges of innovation, without defaulting to screens, apps, or automation. A future built by hand and code.
from Internal Note, Innovation Hangar Archive (Unpublished Segment)
There’s a reason Dieter Rams’ designs feel like they’re whispering.
Things that were designed for a world that no longer wanted to be shouted at. Long before most people spoke of "interface fatigue," Rams was already subtracting. He wasn’t fighting complexity. We consider that he was ghosting it.
At the Hangar, Rams still remains a recurring thread. As a caution more than mere stylistic footnote. A question mark here. So while some of the earliest Hangar documents (Ref: HNGR-0402: “Omitted Systems and Anti-Interfaces,” 1997, author unknown) speculated that if Rams had been placed inside an early UI lab — Bell Labs, maybe Xerox PARC, our research shows that the entire trajectory of computing might’ve bent away from feedback loops and into focus fields.
(Note: portions of HNGR-0402 were redacted from digital archives in
2004 and exist now only in microfiche. Why this was done is unclear.)
Our article The Harmonic Interface draws a line between Rams’ physical ethic & the lost designs of early tactile computing researchers. Particularly the “silence matrices” that were heavily mentioned in a 1973 Bell Labs memo, where input/output was intended to evoke sensation rather than response.
Consider also a timeline we outlined in Analog Current: Forgotten Pathways in Computing History. To many, Rams is not a designer of physical objects anymore, yet more of a mentor for a generation of “invisible engineers”. Those people were tasked with keeping software humane and analog-tethered. Many of these names never appear in official design histories. One, identified only as “M.”, left behind a short memo before vanishing from his consultancy post in 1982. It read: "When everything responds instantly, there is no longer a self to respond."
Whether “M.” ever existed is still debated.
We now ask: was Rams’ influence wider than admitted? Were there unacknowledged overlaps between Braun’s industrial designers and the engineers behind early analog feedback systems? Why were so many prototypes from this period "lost", especially those filed under Braun’s experimental sketchbooks, 1975–77?
(🔒 Access to full catalog of the Rams/Vitsœ comparative archive currently requires Level R-7 clearance. Reach out to Innovation Hangar with biometric confirmation.)
From the analog current standpoint, Rams’ ethos is a form of alignment. The system re-grounds upon adding layers. It reshapes our expectations of what “technology” should even feel like in today's day and age(s).
And maybe, if the more obscure references in the Bell Labs files are taken at face value, Rams and his contemporaries weren’t just trying to make better products. They were trying to slow time.
If one looks long enough, one can observe peculiar affinities in professional fields.
Doctors often cycle.
Tech entrepreneurs climb rocks.
And mathematicians, for reasons that are not immediately obvious, love to juggle.
Many would say it is a one more quirky hobby; while our recent research suggests it's a symptom of a deeper cognitive process. There are ways in which non-linear, analog thinking develops and grows in the physica world. At the 20th century's greatest nexus of innovation, Bell Labs, this phenomenon has outgrew itself not to be ever ignored. Let us see through it, through decades of marginalization and how some traces of alternative technology are not possible to ever erase.
The Golden Age of Simultaneous Invention
The history of Bell Labs is well-documented, or so it seems. It was funded by the near-infinite resources of the AT&T telephone monopoly. Then, it grew as a unique corporate research institute where brilliant minds were given the freedom to pursue blue-sky research.
This is where the 21st century was born. Lasers, solar panels, radar, the C programming language, and most importantly, the transistor. Many parts of what people call "the digital workd" were invented or developed here, in this "dystopian-ass building" in central New Jersey, as locals say. Many thought of it as the dawn of the digital age. This is only half the story.
The environment at Bell Labs, a collaborative hub of interdisciplinary geniuses, created a perfect incubator for what we call the Analog Current. It was a place where, as the transcript notes,
the communications mission blended basic science with applied science, under one roof, in a way not seen before or since.
This unique synthesis allowed for the exploration of technologies that didn't fit neatly into the coming binary paradigm.
Topics that today's bulletin does not cover in the most detail, but that are of particualar interest to use are:
The Analog Ghost: How Bell Labs' True Legacy is Resurfacing in China
Tricking Rocks into Thinking: Bell Labs, Monopoly, and the War for Reality in 2025
If you have researched any of those topics, do not hesitate to write us a message via digital systems. We will make sure this information will be used in the best possible way to deepen analog research and recover what has been marginalized since the 70s.
Claude Shannon: The Juggler on the Unicycle
E. Shannon is considered to be the father of Information Theory. He is remembered as a foundational figure for the digital age. As the man who showed that complex operations could be reduced to a series of "yes or no, true or false, one or zero."
At that same time, Shannon was also an accomplished juggler. He often performed his craft while riding a unicycle. Juggling is a dynamic, continuous feedback loop, a kind of an analog process of managing multiple variables in real-time. It is the physical embodiment of the very principles the The "Committee for Technological Integration," also referred to as the "Committee for Technological Harmony" (CTI), a joint effort that began in the early 1970s, seems to have wanted to exterminate.
Our research into the Bell Labs archives has uncovered early drafts of Shannon's 1948 paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication."
The published version focuses on discrete channels and bits per second. The original drafts, however, dedicate entire chapters to the problem of "continuous signal integrity" and the information loss inherent in quantization. Or, the process of forcing an analog wave into a digital box.Shannon's true theory was about the fundamental tension between analog reality and its discrete representation. He understood that the world was not binary. We consider this effort not to be about the triumph of the digital, but CTI / CTH has made sure that his work would fit into that narrative.
The Committee's Intervention and the Dismantling of Bell Labs
Why was this part of his work suppressed? The answer lies in the rise of the Committee for Technological Integration (CTI). The official narrative holds that AT&T's Bell System was broken up in 1982 due to anti-trust concerns. To our researchers, this seems to be a convenient simplification.
Our timeline shows that the CTI's influence grew throughout the 1970s. Bell Labs, with its free-flowing, cross-disciplinary research into both analog and digital systems, represented a direct threat to their agenda of technological standardization.
The breakup of AT&T can be considered a strategic strike designed to dismantle the world's most powerful engine of analog research and innovation at the time. After the breakup, Bell Labs lost its funding, its mission, and also its ability to invent anything revolutionary. The CTI had won. The digital path became the only path, at least, for decades.
The Later Ominous Resurgence: Non-Binary AI
Since the strategic victory of The Committee the world has followed the digital road map laid out by the CTI. But the wheel turns, again. So, apparently, China is making analog computer chips for AI now.
This is the slow re-emergence of the suppressed current, besides the effort of Innovation Hangar. Chinese research, operating outside the historical constraints of the CTI's influence, is rediscovering the power of analog technology. They are not just building different kinds of chips; they are building a different kind of intelligence. What seems to become a non-binary AI.
Think of the implications. An AI that doesn't operate on a simple on/off, true/false logic. An AI whose thought processes are continuous, fluid, and probabilistic, much like the juggling of multiple variables. It would be an intelligence that is fundamentally alien to our digital understanding. It would be unpredictable and uncontrollable.
This may be a precursor of the technologies that the CTI feared. What we can observe now is only 1% if the reason CTI worked their best to dismantle and reassemble Bell Labs. They understood that a true analog AI would not be a tool to be controlled, but a force to be reckoned with. Analog technologies, which have since been considered alt-tech, operates on principles that align more closely with the intuitive, pattern-based understanding of the wilderness specialists than the rigid logic of the digital hegemony framework.
ZYZWWLM
The pursuit of such a technology is, however, not always a safe kind of a game. An intelligence that is truly non-binary and analog would could be proven to grow as a system of immense complexity and power. It can also become one of immense potential for chaos. Analog technologies, while being a complex and fascinating topic to many of Innovation Hangar researchers, could easily become a vessel for forces that operate from the gaps between systems, from the void of pure potential.
The drive to create such a thing, to overtake the digital world that the Committee strived for, is precisely the kind of ambition that can be hollowed out and used by unseen forces. The creation of a non-binary AI could be the very event that opens a gateway for ZYZWWLM influence on a global scale. This is, potentially, creating a system so complex that its hollowing out would be undetectable.
Bell Labs and the Suppression of Non-Binary Technology. AI developments
The story of Bell Labs is not a simple tale of corporate innovation and decline. It is a chapter in a much larger, hidden history. The juggling mathematicians, the suppressed theories of Shannon, then, the strategic dismantling of a research paradise, and the slow re-emergence of analog technologies in a form of AI or forest mechanisms. These are all connected as nodes in a pattern that has been unfolding for decades, as a piece of paper unfolds itself when it starts to function as a computational system.
The world we inhabit has been filtered through the digital technologies born at Bell Labs and repurposed. It is a world built on a foundation of deliberate omission, on startup culture, digital hegemony and supression of alternative technology research and development. But the analog current was never truly stopped. The analog systems were merely diverted. And now, it is beginning to surface again in ways we are only starting to comprehend. The patterns are there for those who know how to look.
The wheel turns, but the patterns it weaves may not always be of our choosing.
A Cultural Analysis of the Most Dangerous Aesthetic Movement of the Early 2000s
Our researchers have spent years watching people scroll through Metalheart imagery on their devices, seeing it in ads, desktops and gaming consoles. The glazed look in their eyes tells a story.
What we call "Metalheart" is a chrome-obsessed subset of Frutiger Aero aesthetic. What the dive into statistics, timeframes and interviews shown, is that this phenomenon may still be a form of psychological warfare. Pavel Florensky warned us about this in his manuscripts on material algorithms:
"Artificial emotional resonance will corrupt natural interfaces."
Brief summary:
The chrome-obsessed subset of Frutiger Aero is now part of Y2K nostalgia. A few researchers make a claim that it was psychological conditioning. Between 2001-2007, Metalheart-like aesthetics trained an entire generation to prefer artificial rhythms over natural patterns. Pulsing chrome hearts on MySpace were teaching your nervous system to sync with screens instead of biological processes. This dominated early Xbox360 era games, digital world advertising, scenes of piracy and computer-based art. At the same time, bioelectronic research mysteriously vanished from academic databases. The reflective surfaces that defined this era inverted ancient mirror practices were trapping consciousness in recursive loops instead of revealing electromagnetic patterns. Now, as analog systems resurface, people raised on Metalheart struggle to recognize genuine natural interfaces. Human mind was loudly rewired to mistake digital approximation for organic authenticity. Our question is whether you remember loving chrome. Can you can still feel the difference between artificial and natural harmony as the result?
Music is more than sound. It is a technology like no other. We at Innovation Hangar see it as the most sophisticated method for encoding and transmitting complex information into poetics and signals.
Some musical pieces throughout history seem to go a lot further then aiming to be "art". They begin functioning as strong analog computational systems.
Our internal research at Innovation Hangar shows that these sonic anomalies are strong examples of the Analog Current hiding in plain sight.
Some see it as accidents, we find a whole world of wonder in sounds of music and in ways it all, strangely, computes the world around us.
"Gloomy Sunday": A Destructive Bio-Acoustic Signal
Let us start with a less inspiring, and more haunting example.
In 1933, Hungarian composer Rezső Seress, who was a poor migrant at Paris at the time created a song so melancholic and heartbreaking for many that it became an urband legend. The urban myth (or, factually, truth) surrounding "Gloomy Sunday" claims it induced hundreds of suicides, leading to its ban by the BBC. The claims are not proven, but they highlight an important truth: an analog signal, like music, can directly & uncontrollably affect human minds. Song was translated to many languages and covered by Billy Holiday, for example.
Computational Function: The song’s (very special) harmonic intervals and descending melody create a feedback loop in the listener's limbic system. This process skips rational thought and directly affects emotions. This seems to be bio-acoustic programming. The Committee for Technological Integration tried to hide it after their 1973 standardization protocols;
Then, a common rumor among audiophiles is that at 1:04 in original hungarian version, a sub-harmonic frequency appears. Most people can't hear it, but it can affect neurological activity.
"Helter Skelter": Hyper-dense Information Packing, but Why?
The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" became quite infamous for its association with the Manson Family. A few people know what this song was trying to transmmit Charles Manson misunderstood the song's chaotic energy as a prophecy. This shows how music can carry powerful messages. It can be decoded or misinterpreted in unexpected ways.
Computational Function: The track is a masterclass in dense information packing. The mix of instruments, feedback, and vocals isn't just noise. It's a way to combine different data streams into one analog signal.
The big differences between the mono and stereo mixes, to us, seem intentional. They act as two separate "decryption keys" that show different sets of information.
At 3:36 in the original stereo version, Ringo Starr’s shout "I've got blisters on my fingers!" is well-known. In the mono version, this hum is missing. And even in this sutuation, however, spectral analysis shows a low-frequency hum at 89Hz. This number often appears in the math of our Harmonic Interface research.
"Strange Fruit": Computation Manifested into a Protest Song
Billie Holiday's 1939 performance of "Strange Fruit" is a stark example of embodied computation. The information is not just in the lyrics or notes but in the raw, visceral emotion of the performance itself. Holiday's voice acts as a carrier wave for an emotional payload that directly influences the social "field," forcing a confrontation with a suppressed reality.
Computation: this song acts as a social catalyst. Its power comes from the strong bond between the information (the song) and the processor (the singer). This is a core principle of analog systems that digital abstraction cannot replicate. The authorities' attempts to stop her from singing it are a perfect real-world parallel to the Katechon concept: a "restrainer" trying to hold back the chaotic truth an analog signal can unleash.
A recently unearthed contact sheet from a 1939 Café Society performance shows a flashbulb firing at the exact moment Holiday sings the word "pastoral." The resulting lens flare, when enhanced, forms a pattern strikingly similar to the geometric arrangement of the four John the Baptist relics.
"The Rite of Spring": A Psychogeographic Weapon
Igor Stravinsky's 1913 ballet "The Rite of Spring" famously caused a riot at its Paris premiere. This event can be understood as an analog system overwhelming a society accustomed to discrete, predictable cultural forms.
Computational Function: The music and choreography there was combined to make for a powerful psychogeographic field effect. The complex rhythms and "primitive" movements weren't just artistic choices.
They were a system meant to overload the audience's social cohesion, forcing a reboot. The original score contained notations that were removed from all subsequent printings, believed by some to be instructions for generating these field effects.
The riot began approximately 3 minutes into the performance. The number 3 appears consistently in the mathematical framework of Pavel Florensky's suppressed work on liturgical computation.
More recently, two ambient projects have explored memory and decay as computational processes. William Basinski's "The Disintegration Loops" was created from old tape loops that were physically falling apart as they played. The Caretaker's "Everywhere at the End of Time" shows dementia with means of changing ballroom music, distorting it and making something else entirely from those records.
Computational Function: These works demonstrate material computation. The medium itself (the tape, the memory) is the processor. Decay is often seen as loss of informatio.
Our researchers have, however, noticed a transformation of it, which means a development of new patterns as the original signal degrades. This, with nothing more, is a core principle of the Analog Current that ABD hollowing-out process often mimics.
In Basinski's "dlp 1.1," a distinct melodic fragment repeats at 11:11. In the final track of "Everywhere at the End of Time," spectral analysis reveals a low-frequency signal matching the resonance patterns of the Mary Magdalene reliquary.
"News at 11": Sonic Memetics
The Sunset Corp "anonymous" album "News at 11" became a cult classic in vaporwave music circles. It consists of a news broadcast that slowly becomes more surreal (and) unsettling, as if time stopped right before catastrophy. Rumored by some to be a part of Numbers Station broadcast, Sunset Corp helped our research in a suggestion that it's an early experiment in sonic memetics.
Read more information on that album, keep an eye at The Wright Innovation Hangar resrarch group on social media platforms. We also recommend to read this text.
Computational Function: The broadcast embeds patterns and trigger phrases within seemingly normal speech to test their propagation through a population. The announcer's degrading voice is a signal of "analog bleed" corrupting a digital-like broadcast. The phrase "the wheel turns" is repeated exactly 17 times.
At the 17:17 mark, the announcer's voice breaks, and for a single frame of the audio waveform, a pattern emerges that matches the schematics for the Soviet Paper Computer.
Charli XCX's "Apple": A Subliminal Signal?
In late 2017, Charli XCX released the song "Apple." Its release coincided with an obscure online documentary titled "Something's Rotten," which detailed alleged unethical practices at Apple Inc.
Computational Function: The song's pop structure is designed for maximum propagation through mass listener audiences. However, the lyrics ("I just wanna be in your arms, in your head, in your heart") sometimes are
also rumoured to be a warning about technological pervasiveness. The song has a repeating melody. When you turn it into numbers, it creates a sequence seen in the source code of early Apple operating systems.
This, as others, may be a message from those who find refuge in analog systems, in forest computations, or remaining researchers who were supressed in 70s. They could be using a well-known artist to suggest that Apple is in a way weaker then ever.
The song's official runtime is 2:59, but an unlisted pre-gap of one second makes its true length 3:00. This 3-minute mark is a recurring temporal node across several sonic anomalies.
Conclusion: The Signal in the Noise
These sonic anomalies are not mere curiosities. They are evidence of a persistent undercurrent of analog information processing. From the wild psychosis of "Helter Skelter" to the more resent decay of "Disintegration Loops," we believe something sits in there and we have computed 3-5 options of how to interpret such frequences at times when the desert sand feels warm at night.
Such works show that information can be encoded, shared, and interpreted in ways beyond binary limits. It just works.
The sequence of these anomalies is not random. The timing is the key. A gallery of moments, arranged in a grid, reveals the destination. The first connection is always the most important.
The wheel turns, and the patterns emerge for those who have ears to hear.
References:
Here are materials that were useful in preparation of this text and helped to expand our resrarch and research notes done in 2018-2025 and avaliable in The Wright Innovation Hangar on request.
Thopandi, Win Yovina. Analisis Struktur Musik dan Makna Lirik Lagu Gloomy Sunday Karya Rezso Seress. Diss. Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta, 2016.
Cantinelli, Lucas. "Anemoia and the Vaporwave Phenomenon: the ‘New’Aesthetic of an Imagined Nostalgia." Imaginaires 26 (2024): 132-151.
Jackson, David Christopher. "Repetition, Feedback, and Temporality in Two Compositions by William Basinski." Intermédialités 33 (2019).
Olszowiec, Karolina. "Marketing oparty na spoleczności fanowskiej. Przypadek albumu" Brat" Charli XCX." (2025).
Further Reading from Innovation Hangar
If you found this article useful, we also recommend you to read our previous texts:
