soft experiments

HeartwoodRaise a single oak, year by year: water and feed it, then spin a dial to send time racing — it grows, leafs and bares with the seasons, weathers rain and snow, and once it thrives, draws in birds, squirrels, chipmunks and the odd beehive.

Slow MobileA Calder-style hanging mobile turns gently, its painted shapes drifting in and out of balance on near-invisible threads.

Lava LampIn a warm glass column, a slow blob of wax wells up off the hot base, stretches into a wobbling teardrop, breaks free, drifts to the cool top, and sinks back to begin again.

Last EmbersThe fire is long past its blaze — three logs have burned down to a bed of glowing coals in the hearth, breathing orange as the draught comes and going grey as it passes, shedding the odd lazy spark and crumbling slowly, flake by flake, into soft ash.

Wind ChimesA cluster of chimes hangs in a doorway, and when the breeze moves through, the tubes swing and touch and a soft ring spreads out into the warm afternoon.

Jelly DriftTranslucent jellyfish pulse and sink through deep blue water, trailing soft bioluminescent veils.

Ant RoadsFrom a dark nest a thread of ants finds a crumb, and over minutes a faint wandering trail tightens into a single shining highway of bodies — then the crumb is gone and the road slowly fades back into the grass.

Slow LampA little shelf of oddly-shaped hand-blown glass vessels, each one a warm lamp — fat glowing blobs of molten wax climb, swell, kiss and pinch apart, cool near the crown and sink again, and every irregular chamber pours its lava a different way, forever.

One CandleA single candle burns down through the dark, its flame leaning and recovering while wax wells up, runs, and freezes in pale rivulets.

Paper LanternsA string of paper lanterns sways on the night wind, each one glowing from a candle stub within — the flames lean and gutter, the warm light breathing through the paper, shadows of the wire frames flickering on the skins.

Rain GlassRaindrops gather on a windowpane, swell, then race down in wandering rivulets that swallow the drops in their path.

Ink TangleAn empty outlined shape fills itself one tile at a time with intricate black-ink patterns, the pen looping and hatching cell by cell the way a hand doodles in the margins until the whole form is dense with quiet line.

night-bonfirenight-bonfire.

Creeping RotA neat tiled garden of pale order is slowly overrun by a dark, branching bloom of decay that creeps cell to cell until almost nothing tidy is left — then a few clean tiles fight back.

The Sleepless GardenA row of glistening eyeballs spins on veined optic-nerve stalks, and whenever one tilts toward falling a long inked hand darts up from the dark to flick it wide-awake again.

Plate SpinnerA row of china plates spins atop wobbly canes, and an unseen hand keeps darting back to flick the one most about to fall.

HarmonographA brass pendulum drawing machine swings and slowly precesses, its pen tracing an endless looping rose into a tray of pale sand while the swing decays to stillness.

Heavier ThingsA heavy watercolour sun sags a sheet of spacetime while a fresh handful of planets circle it — each dragging its own travelling dimple through the grid. The camera drifts slowly overhead. Tap for a whole new system; the sun is a different size every time.

Mile MarkerA first-person desert drive behind a dusty windshield — the road rushes by, telephone poles and birds stream past, mile markers and billboards and the odd cattle skull slide out of the haze, tumbleweeds bounce across, and the blue mesas never get any closer. Wipe the glass; speed up.

Dust and WireA watercolour desert — a long road, distant mesas, two telephone poles and a wire. Small birds drop in, fidget and preen, sit a spell, then push off; the wire bounces under each landing. Sometimes it empties, then two or three flutter back.

Learning CurvesNine machine-learning ideas, each drawn as a chart — axes, then points, then the fitted line — with a tile explaining what it is and where it's used. Linear & logistic regression, clustering, SVM, gradient descent, and more.

Strange ShapesA workshop that paints odd 3D shapes in watercolour — a Klein bottle, knots, a supershape, spherical harmonics — tumbles them, then re-paints each with new parameters. Grab to spin it.

InfillosophyA bright-green laser etches 3D-printer infill into a hexagon — all 18 slicer patterns (grid, gyroid, honeycomb, lightning, Hilbert curve, tri-hexagon…), snapping on and off as it fills, then wiping to start the next.

Busy BeesA sunny pastel meadow. Little black-and-yellow bees buzz out of a straw hive, wander to the flowers and bushes, forage a beat, then thread their way home. New flowers every time.

MurmurationA few hundred birds wheel against a soft blue sky — then gather. Every few seconds the swirling flock flows into a shape: a bird, an elephant, a heart, and melts away again.

Hex All GoneColored hexagons drop and settle into a white honeycomb — or bounce away.

No Good EndingColored cubes drop into a grid of black holes, rest a beat, then pop out and leave. Forever.

Atom's AliveA single atom drifts and bounces while electrons orbit its nucleus — then transforms, element by element, up the periodic table.

One Good GustA watercolor oak with one leaf. A breeze comes, the leaf lets go and drifts to the grass. Hold space to blow your own gust.

One Whole YearA watercolor oak through the seasons — green summer, falling leaves, snowy winter, budding spring. Hold ←/→ to slow or speed the year.

Bowling BallA camera inside a bowling ball's finger hole, rolling down the lane forever.

Infinity CoasterFirst-person on an endless roller coaster — loops, corkscrews, drops.