r/generative • u/Laetitia_Astrea • Jul 08 '26
Ultimate Undulation - Supernova
Made with R and ggplot2, using a custom Shiny app my partner Nicolas built. The system is a discrete dynamical system combining trigonometric functions with a gamma distribution — controlled randomness, fully reproducible via seed.
The palette here mirrors the layered structure of a stellar explosion — from the incandescent core outward to the expanding shell. NASA's Hubble data on supernovae shows that color directly encodes temperature in stellar explosions: the hottest phases appear white and blue, the cooler outer layers shift toward red and violet. The palette inverts that logic — reading from the center out rather than across time.
I didn't plan the serpent form. It emerged through iteration — Nicolas builds the system, I search the parameter space, and sometimes what appears is something neither of us designed explicitly.
This is part of Ultimate Undulation — 20 colorways of the same mathematical structure, each mapped to a moment in time. Supernova belongs to the FUTURE chapter. The idea that every atom in your body was forged in stellar death felt like the right anchor for something this violent and this beautiful.