small systems

seven sketches
· the study, 2026

Each of these is a small rule — a flow, a reaction, an attractor, a grammar of growth — turned into a room you can move around in.

They are not meant to do anything. The math draws itself; you may nudge it, or watch.

01
embers
flow field · noise-driven wind
Particles trace a slowly turning field of noise. Your cursor warps the wind within a small radius; the whole thing breathes on its own timing.
02
coral
gray-scott reaction · turing pattern
Two chemicals, one that eats the other. The equation is a page of Turing's from 1952. Click to seed a spot; watch it decide what species it wants to be.
03
breathing
clifford attractor · drifting parameters
Four numbers, a pair of sine and cosine functions, iterated a million times. The shape reforms itself as the numbers slowly change. Your cursor pulls at them.
04
understory
space colonization · slow growth
You plant the leaves; the branches grow toward them. The algorithm is from a 2007 paper on modelling trees. Runs at its own pace, forever, if you keep planting.
05
chimes
web audio · minor pentatonic
A tone garden. Hover to sound, click to plant a note that keeps singing softly for a minute. Tuned to a scale so nothing you plant can sound wrong.
06
weave
truchet tiling · smith arcs
A grid of tiles, each holding one of two arcs. Random gives you rivers. Your cursor bends them into currents around itself. Click to shake the whole cloth.
07
lull
wave equation · rain on still water
Nothing to click. The rain falls at its own rhythm and the ripples propagate under a finite-difference wave equation. Leave it open. It will not stop.