Remixes

Nine well-loved creative-coding sketches, from classic example sets, Generative Design and the classics, read again through the kiln: fire, clay, glaze, glass and ash. They share one palette (a dark clay ground, ash white, ember, and traditional glazes), a pyrometric heat ramp for anything with energy, from dull red through cherry and orange to white heat, and canvases that fade rather than clear. Each keeps its source’s idea and interaction, and runs at 60 fps with thousands of elements drawn through numpy bulk calls.

The shared palette and ramp are in examples/_kiln_touch.py. Six of them play as videos of their first four seconds, as the piece builds up; the other three are a picture of the frame four seconds in. In every remix space pauses, h hides the caption and esc quits. Each runs with uv run python examples/remix_<name>.py.

Throwing

A bowl rises on the potter’s wheel, seen from above: 72 noisy rings of wet clay turn at wheel speed, and your fingertip dents them, marks the closest point of each ring and pulls the wall up, throwing glowing slip onto the splash pan. It reworks polylineBlobsExample, whose blob outlines become throwing ridges.

Controls. Move to touch the clay, press and hold to pull the wall up. Up and down change the wheel speed, r wedges new clay. Source: examples/remix_throwing.py.

Stoke-hole

A quarter of a million sparks lift off a bed of coals on a curl-noise draught, glowing by their temperature on the heat ramp until they cool to grey flakes of ash. It keeps the mechanism of gpuParticleSystemExample, positions and velocities in float textures stepped by a ping-pong of Fbos, and fires it.

Controls. Move the mouse to work the bellows: the draught blows the sparks and heats them. Click for a burst of white heat. Source: examples/remix_sparks.py.

Strata

Octave noise laid down as a cross-section of glaze and clay: fifteen bands flow, pinch out and fold over one another, and the seam where glaze meets the clay body stays molten. On the right, eight test tiles show the octaves of the seam with their weights. It reworks noise1dOctaveExample, which sums eight streams of noise weighted by sliders.

Controls. Hover to warm the seam, press in the section to push the layers down, click or drag across a tile to set that octave’s weight. 1 to 8 toggle an octave, 0 restores the weights. Source: examples/remix_strata.py.

Ember Tree

A tree after the fire went through, twelve forks deep: 8,191 branches of charred wood with cracks still glowing inside, an ember breathing at every tip, and sparks riding the draught up from the crown. It takes Daniel Shiffman’s recursive tree, whose rule of forking and shrinking is unrolled into numpy here, so each generation of branches is one bulk draw.

Controls. Move left and right to open or close the forks, click to fan the embers into a shower of sparks. Source: examples/remix_ember_tree.py.

Cooling Glass

Conway’s rules poured as molten glass: a cell is born white-hot, and one that dies cools down the heat ramp into dark teal and cobalt glass, so gliders drag glowing tails and every pattern leaves its history behind like slag. John Conway’s Game of Life (1970) runs on a grid of 320 by 200 cells, counted with numpy.

Controls. Move to play a torch over the slab, drag to paint live cells, click to drop a gather of molten glass. c clears the slab. Source: examples/remix_cooling_glass.py.

Blue and White

A porcelain plate paints itself in cobalt, twenty-four times over: a brush steered by noise bands the rim, fills it with scrolls and the well with petals, and the ink pools darker where it slows. It takes the mirrored kaleidoscope sketch, whose twelve turns and their mirror images become a plate.

Controls. Drag over the plate to paint with the brush, mirrored like it. c brings a fresh plate out of the kiln. Source: examples/remix_plate.py.

Crystalline

Zinc crystals bloom like frost flowers in a macro-crystalline glaze as the kiln cools, grown by aggregation: probes fall toward each crystal and stick where they touch, so chains of discs run out as needles, born white-hot on the growth front. Inspired by Generative Design’s growth sketch P_2_2_4_01 (in nannou’s port); the idea only, no code.

Controls. Click to drop a seed crystal, r fires the kiln again. Source: examples/remix_crystalline.py.

Running Glaze

Eight thousand drops of copper red run down a shino wall: gravity pulls them, a noise relief steers them into rivulets, and they slow as the glaze stiffens and stop in beads, pooling to deep oxblood where they gather. Inspired by Generative Design’s noise agents, M_1_5_02 (in nannou’s port); the idea only, no code.

Controls. Move to play a torch over the wall, drag sideways to tilt the pot. c dips a fresh pot. Source: examples/remix_glaze_flow.py.

Luster

A damped harmonograph draws itself in gold luster on a tenmoku jar: three pendulums near a simple ratio, a little detuned, spiral the figure in, and the line cools on the heat ramp as the swing decays. About twenty-five thousand segments are drawn again every frame. Inspired by Generative Design’s oscillation figures, M_2_3 (in nannou’s port); the idea only, no code.

Controls. Move left and right to choose the ratio, up and down to detune it, click to start a new figure. Source: examples/remix_harmonograph.py.