Case study · AIM (in-house) · the platform, performed
The portfolio is the instrument.
The world's first portfolio you can play live on MIDI hardware: forty-three browser-synthesized instruments, one clock, one key, mixed like a set. Every screenshot on this page was captured from the running site — and further down, the instruments themselves are embedded, live.
The challenge
Every studio's website says the same thing: we care about craft. The claim is unfalsifiable — a reel proves you finished something once, not that the taste is in the building. AIM wanted a portfolio that demonstrates craft instead of describing it: if the studio's whole thesis is sound × image directed as one system, the site itself should be playable proof.
The PREVIZ approach
So we built the proof into the site. Forty-three instruments and four VJ machines, every voice synthesized in the browser — no samples, nothing leaves your device. A harmonic lock keeps all of them in one key on one clock, with chord progressions conducted across the whole room. Recipes load pre-patched bands in one tap; scenes and song mode arrange a set; cloud rigs make any board shareable by link; and MIDI learn maps hardware onto roughly a hundred and forty knobs — so the portfolio is performed, not browsed.
Outcomes
04
43
Instruments, zero samples
Counted from the codebase: forty-three numbered instruments in the registry, every voice synthesized in the browser with Web Audio.
20
Video FX modes
Counted from the codebase: twenty FX modes on the VJ engine — feedback transforms, geometry remaps, and hard grades riding the live mix.
18
One-tap bands (recipes)
Counted from the codebase: eighteen pre-patched boards — load one and it starts playing as a band.
1st
Portfolio playable on MIDI hardware
As far as we know — and we checked cheerfully. Plug in a controller, MIDI-learn a knob, and play the studio's website like a rig.
Play it — right here
These aren't screenshots. Tap one awake and play.
The instruments below are the real thing, mounted live in this page from the same registry that powers /perform. They stay dormant until you activate them — and sound only starts when you press play.
PULSE·FORGE — a reactor of a drum machine: four neon orbit-rings of steps, a light beam sweeping the bar, and a portfolio still convulsing at the core on every kick. It comes seeded with a four-on-the-floor — press Play and it bangs.
VJ·PINS — the pin-board video machine. It rides the live mix, so paint a beat on the drum machine above and watch the pins pump to what you play. Sound × image, in one scroll.
MONOLITH — the deep one: a black stone of a drum machine whose kick tunes all the way down to a 17 Hz seismic thud, with a bit-crush chain that grinds the whole kit into heavy techno. Zero the Pitch knob, raise Crush, press Play — headphones or a subwoofer recommended.
01
The claim
A portfolio is a set of promises about what a studio would do with your brief. AIM's promise is that sound and image are one directed system — so the site makes that promise falsifiable. The /perform stage is an infinite board where the studio's instruments are dropped, patched, and played as one room: a drum machine sidechains a bassline, a palette harmoniser reads the reel's colours into chords, a video tunnel pumps to the master output.
The hero image above is not a mockup. It is a screenshot of the HOUSE SUNRISE recipe playing — captured from the running site, the same board any visitor can load in one tap.
02
One clock, one key
Forty-three instruments improvising together should be mud. The reason it isn't is the same discipline PREVIZ applies to film: lock the invariants, then let the performance move inside them. One transport clock drives every sequencer, so polymeter reads as groove rather than chaos. One harmonic lock quantizes every voice — synths, arpeggiators, even the physics toys — to the deck's key and scale, and a conductor walks chord progressions across the whole room at once.
The math is unglamorous and absolute: every note every instrument can emit passes through the same quantizer, so the worst a visitor can do is play something consonant. Craft as a system, not a take.
03
Play it anywhere
Plug a MIDI controller into your browser and the rig becomes hardware: MIDI learn maps any knob on screen to any knob on your desk — around a hundred and forty targets across the room. Scenes snapshot a board; song mode chains scenes into an arranged set; cloud rigs save the whole thing behind a shareable link, so a board built in Los Angeles opens ready-to-play in Tokyo.
And because it all runs on Web Audio and canvas, there is no install, no plugin, no login. The portfolio performs on the first click — which is, in the end, the studio's whole argument about craft.
From the file
“Sign off on motion was the pitch. This is the encore — the whole studio, played live.”
— AIM · platform notes
Credits
- Concept & platform
- AIM
- Instruments & engine
- AIM PREVIZ team
- Representation
- ATRBUTE
The work
02
AIM PREVIZ
Bring PREVIZ to your next production.
Sign off on motion, not moodboards. Blocking, look-dev, and continuity locked before a single frame is shot.