Wasteland Props·Public Workbench·The study
The study
Lowering the barriers to creative sound practice through free, on-device browser tools.
Wasteland Props grew out of a practice of making practical props and films, and of writing our own software to record, separate, shape and play the sound that work needed. This project releases that working toolkit as the beginning of an expanding, free suite of browser-based instruments, and makes it the basis of a study. Professional creative tools are usually gated by cost, specialist hardware, institutional access and a reliable connection. These run in an ordinary browser on the phone or laptop people already own. The study asks what changes when those barriers are removed: whether the value people find in a creative tool shifts from what it costs to what they make, learn and share with it, and how creative practice develops in places that have been far from studios and schools. The people who use the tools are treated as co-designers rather than end users, and their recordings, feedback and work will shape what the toolkit becomes.
Your work stays yours. Every recording, stem, kit and wavetable is processed and stored on your own device. Nothing leaves it and nothing is sent home: no accounts, no tracking, no uploads. Anything that reaches the study arrives only because a participant chose to share it. Once added to a phone's Home Screen, each tool is designed to run independently, without a connection, and we are working to keep both the tools and the work inside them there for as long as the device allows. Browsers can still clear stored data; making the tools as durable as the platform permits is part of the work.
- FREENo cost and no licence for the software toolkit.
- ON-DEVICENothing leaves your device. Nothing is sent home.
- INSTALLABLEAdd it to your Home Screen; designed to run without a connection.
- PARTICIPATORYThe people who use the tools shape what they become.