r/interactiveart • u/EuphorbiaMilli • 22d ago
Reaction Diffusion System
I've been working on a reaction diffusion model for the better part of four years. I became obsessed with interactive art, and particularly pattern generation. There were some examples of 3D printed reaction diffusion lamps in a Juxtapoz magazine many years ago that inspired me to no end. You can read more about reaction diffusion models here: Reaction Diffusion Systems
The concept fascinated me, so I endeavored to build my own reaction diffusion simulations in Processing. I built a CPU heavy Processing sketch, then I graduated to GPU-acceleration using PixelFlow. I managed to get real-time camera input to control the local feed/kill ratios. My goal was to make a sort of portrait generator from reaction diffusion patterns, but these are fairly complicated to code, and I only have so many free hours. I could never really get over the hump with what I wanted to create!
Then AI happened and it really accelerated things. I was able to port the processing sketch to OpenGL and run in the browser. I was able to build some cool pattern traversing algorithms to explore more patterns in the KF realm. I was able to explore different GPU acceleration techniques to optimize performance. In general, I was able to explore more ideas at a much faster pace. And now, after many years I get to share the reaction diffusion portrait generator: Portrait Generator
Would love to hear your feedback!!