Musings

Generative pieces that run in the browser. Most of them listen to the device: the clock, your hand, the keyboard, and, if you allow it, sound and tilt.

• 01 · Fluid

  Ink

  A real fluid simulation with ink as pigment on paper.

• 02 · Reaction–diffusion

  Coral

  Two simulated chemicals: one feeds, one eats the feed and multiplies.

• 03 · Particles

  Swarm

  Points ride a wind field and their place in a shape.

• 04 · Chaos

  Attractor

  Two lines of math, iterated millions of times a second.

• 05 · Raytracing

  Mercury

  Drops of liquid metal that merge when they touch, raytraced in a single shader.

• 06 · Interference

  Waves

  Ripples from several sources, added together.

• 07 · Tiling

  Weave

  A field of tiles, each holding two curved bands.

• 08 · Terrain

  Relief

  A slowly shifting topographic map.

• 09 · Water

  Pond

  A wave simulation over a tiled pool floor.

• 10 · Light

  Glass

  A leaded window whose panes are grown from scattered points.

• 11 · Sky

  Night

  Stars placed on a sphere and rotated by sidereal time for your date, time, and time zone.

• 12 · Letters

  Type

  Every letter is a few thousand points that remember their place in the word.

• 13 · Pattern

  Moiré

  Lay one fine pattern over another at a slight angle and a third, larger pattern appears that neither one contains.

• 14 · Fractal

  Mandelbrot

  The most famous shape in mathematics, zoomed until single-precision numbers give out, then it surfaces and dives somewhere else.

• 15 · Thin film

  Soap

  The colors are real physics: light bouncing off the front and back of a film thinner than its wavelength.

• 16 · Particle physics

  Collider

  An end-on view of a particle detector.

• 17 · Optics

  Prism

  White light meets glass, and each wavelength bends by a slightly different amount, so the beam fans out into a spectrum.

• 18 · Orbits

  Gravity

  Sixty thousand grains of dust falling around stars you place.

• 19 · Fourier

  Epicycles

  Any path can be built from circles turning at different speeds, each riding on the last.

• 20 · Quantum

  Orbital

  Sixty thousand points sampled from the real hydrogen wavefunction, so denser means more probable.

• 21 · Pendulums

  Harmonograph

  A Victorian drawing machine: pendulums swing, slowly dying down, and a pen between them traces the sum.

• 22 · Geometry

  Hyperbolic

  Space where parallel lines spread apart and there is far more room around every corner than there should be.

• 23 · Space weather, live

  Aurora

  Electrons carried by the solar wind spiral down Earth’s magnetic field and strike the thin upper air.

• 24 · Resonance

  Sand

  A metal plate vibrating at one frequency has lines that stay perfectly still.

• 25 · Magnetism

  Ferrofluid

  Oil full of magnetic nanoparticles.

• 26 · Electricity

  Lightning

  A stepped leader feels its way down from the cloud in short jumps, forking as it goes.

• 27 · Trance and drums

  Groovebox

  A trance groovebox laid out like the Roland TR-808: sixteen steps of drums plus a supersaw lead, a rolling bass, plucked arpeggios and pads that all follow one chord progression, with the kick pumping the synths.

• 28 · Spaceflight, live

  LaunchBeta

  The next SpaceX launches from Launch Library 2: countdown, status, booster history, landing plan, pad weather and the webcast.

• 29 · Satellites, live

  StarlinkBeta

  About ten thousand satellites in low orbit, placed from CelesTrak’s element sets (built from SpaceX’s own ephemerides) with the standard SGP4 model.

• 30 · Spotify, live

  Listening

  The current track comes from Spotify through a small function on this site.

• 31 · Image tool

  Sift

  Turn any photo or video into dithering, halftone, engraving, mosaics, text art and pixel sorts.