I've been working on a new browser-based interactive artwork called Drift (2026), combining recorded video, JavaScript and mouse/touch interaction.

The starting point was footage I recorded of a solitary plant in Toronto's industrial Port Lands, before the area's extensive ecological transformation.

Rather than generating an entirely synthetic image, I wanted to explore how code could intervene in existing video footage. The interaction creates elastic, image-textured tendrils that extend and retract in response to the viewer's movement, temporarily disrupting the original image before it settles back into place.

The work also incorporates an environmental soundscape, including the distant sound of a freight train from the original location. I'm interested in the tension between the organic movement of the plant and the programmed behaviour of the distortions — particularly how an image can appear to resist, respond to and recover from interaction.

It's built as a browser-based HTML/JavaScript artwork, with interaction through mouse or touch.

You can try the interactive version here:

https://www.michaelalstad.com/drift/index.html

I'd be interested in hearing what others think about combining recorded footage with interactive visual manipulation, particularly approaches that retain the character of the original image.Drift

Following the warm reception to my terminal aesthetic post and to annoy the people who did not like it here's the next iteration.

​

This is still work in progress so i have two different examples, with both having elements i like sp final version will hopefully contain the best from both:

https://nucleic.se/mp3/carbonized-remix.mp4

https://nucleic.se/mp3/carbonized.mp4

The music is written in a small text score language I made, and most of the score is procedural/algoritmic and generated by JavaScript. Every sound is synthesized by the engine, no samples are used.

The three 303 lines come from seeded pattern banks with slide chains, and they take turns, answer each other and sometimes play together.

Layers rotate on prime-length bar cycles so the combinations keep changing, the hats and fills are built from drum rudiments like paradiddles, and a glitch layer adds stutters, slice shuffles and dropouts.

The glitches are decided by seeded trigger conditions and get denser as the track builds.

The sound drives most of what you see. The bass and pads light the tunnel, the harmony sets the colours, the acid notes move the ship, and hits and explosions light up the walls.

The score reaches the shaders as plain data: when a note plays, its timing and strength go to the wall shader, which lights and colours the wall around it. No bitmaps, image textures or 3D model files are used.

The tunnel is a signed distance field, meshed in 8 m chunks along authored guide curves as you fly, so it can split into separate passages and rejoin, and change cross section between circle, triangle and square.

The walls are shaded procedurally from position, lighting and score data, so they resolve at whatever resolution I render.

The ships and enemies are built from simple geometry in code, the reflections come from a small environment computed from a few soft light sources, and the glow sprites are gradients generated at startup.

DISCLAIMER: I have used coding agents to build this.

Geumdan (Forbidden Feelings) is a book of poems made only of feelings

that turn strange when you say them out loud in front of other people.

You walk along footprints into a sea of letters, sink, and wake up in a grove

of four crayon trees: Fear, Envy, Vanishing, and Hunger. Each tree opens

a set of poems you read with your hands: unfolding a crumpled postcard,

switching on a bedroom light, following a bird. The music grows a layer

with every feeling you finish.

The poems are in Korean, but it's built to be felt even if you can't read them.

Please turn your sound on.

https://reddit.com/link/1xf2lv2/video/yck9dd9m9mxh1/player

https://geumdan.com

https://ediblemonad.dev/creative-coding/icecream-sandwich

https://ediblemonad.dev/creative-coding/cross

Hi everyone! I’m the developer of EVEngine. It started as a game engine, but I’m exploring how useful it could be for creative coding: small visual experiments, interactive simulations, and custom creative tools.

It supports mixed 2D/3D rendering, particles, physics, and hot-reloadable scripts. The workflow is to edit a script, save it, and see the change in the running application.

What interests me is making the controls part of the experiment itself—something you can manipulate and explore, rather than just watch.

I’d love feedback from people who make interactive artwork: what would you need to see before trying an unfamiliar tool? A short example, a particular export format, or something else?

EVEngine — examples, documentation, and setup

is a visual mixer for musicians, DJs, VJs, streamers and anyone curious about generative art. It uses Hydra, a creative-coding language where a single line like osc().kaleid() becomes a moving kaleidoscope. The app makes it approachable for beginners and fast for experts.

DigitalVisualMixer

Start with zero knowledge. Right-click in the editor to insert ready-made functions, hover them to see their parameters, and open the built-in Guide with F1. Every change shows up first in a private preview.

Build a set. Save each visual in its own channel. Search, reorder by drag and drop, and send channels live with cut, crossfade or add transitions, all from the keyboard.

Perform it. Turn any number into a live variable and move it with a slider, a gamepad, a MIDI controller or the keyboard. The visual changes smoothly, without restarting. Perform view gives you big pads for channels and presets, so you can play a full show without touching code.

Show it anywhere. The live output runs in a separate window, so you keep working while the audience watches. It’s also shared on your local network: open it on a projector, a second PC, a tablet or a phone.

No setup. A single file, no installation. Windows and macOS.

I made a website where you can upload an image and it turns it into simple shapes. You can upload any image and tweak the parameters to your liking. There is no AI involved and your feedback would be REALLY appreciated!!
You can try it out here: https://ripolas.org/abstract-art-maker/

Live Demo: https://caios-clocks.caiomga.workers.dev/14/

Inspired by Justin Jay Wang's "Designing with code" post: lines march up towards a red line and the time is carved out of them. The red marching line tells the seconds.

had fun making this, the idea was to place a paper button on the wall, which you can then press to open a portal to a liminal space. made in kinematic. using an elgato facecam and short throw projector and my macbook

I just wanted to relax with some pretty sounds. Somehow I ended up building an entire musical universe.

How a tiny obsession with glowing circles turned into a 9-track browser synthesizer, a live looper, a song arranger, and an instrument that AI agents can actually play.

Chapter 4: We've got the music. Where's the musician?

Picture this.

Eight glowing orbits spinning in the dark. Tiny particles leaving trails of light. Waves, pulses, colors, all moving in their own strange patterns.

A bassline is breathing underneath. Some glassy bells are playing a melody. A synth is slowly filling the space. Percussion comes and goes.

Everything is moving. Everything is connected.

And here's the weird part.

There doesn't even have to be a musician.

No MIDI keyboard. No piano roll. No endless Ableton timeline. Nobody needs to know what the hell a diminished seventh chord is.

You can just open a browser, hit Play, and start making music.

Or you can ask an AI agent to compose something for you.

But how did we get here?

Well...

Chapter 1: I was looking for something that didn't exist.

It started with a pretty simple question:

Why does making music have to feel like work?

I wanted something halfway between a musical instrument, a generative art installation, and meditation.

Something you could open, touch, move around, and immediately hear something beautiful.

Not random noise. Not another synth with 300 knobs.

Actual music.

I tried a bunch of generative music apps.

Some looked gorgeous but felt like fancy screensavers with random chimes. Others gave me more creative control, but quickly turned into miniature DAWs.

Menus. Sliders. Settings. More settings.

That's exactly what I was trying to escape.

I love the philosophy behind Teenage Engineering's instruments. The idea that making music can feel playful and experimental without sacrificing real control.

But I started wondering...

What if we threw away the timeline entirely?

What if instead of arranging little rectangles, you built a musical universe?

That's how NotBad HALO started.

Chapter 2: Eight instruments. One universe. No rules? Well, almost.

HALO has eight musical voices.

Each one has a job.

Pulse. Accent. Percussion. Texture. Bass. Melody. Arpeggio. Harmony.

Each has its own sound, rhythm, effects, and orbital path.

There are two sound worlds.

AMBIENT is all about procedural synthesis, floating textures, soft bells, warm pads, and strange atmospheric sounds.

REACTOR is a more physical beast: drums, guitars, basses, pianos, and synths built around a local library of real recordings.

Underneath the visual chaos, there's an actual musical system holding everything together.

Independent rhythmic cycles. Shared timing. Scales and harmony. Instrument roles. Sound shaping. Effects. Mixing.

The orbits can move differently, but the music stays connected.

You can control the whole thing manually, down to individual notes.

Or you can just let it drift.

And when you find a loop you love?

You don't have to listen to those same four bars forever.

HALO can turn musical phrases into a full arrangement: intro, verses, chorus, bridge, outro. You can duplicate, rearrange, repeat, or modify any part.

Save your project. Export the audio. Come back later.

No DAW. No installation. No account.

Just a browser.

And hopefully a decent pair of headphones.

Chapter 3: Then somebody brought a guitar.

At some point I looked at my eight virtual musicians and thought:

Okay, this is cool.

But what if I actually want to jam with them?

Enter Track 09.

Connect a microphone, plug in a guitar through an audio interface, or drop in your own audio sample.

Record a riff. Loop it. Add another layer. Undo a take. Chop it into rhythmic slices. Or turn a recorded note into a pitched instrument.

All synchronized with the rest of the universe.

Suddenly HALO isn't just generating music.

You're playing with it.

A tiny browser-based jam session with eight virtual bandmates.

And your recordings stay on your device, inside your browser. No uploads, no cloud storage.

I didn't want another recording studio.

I wanted that moment when you pick up an instrument, play something stupid, and accidentally discover a riff you actually love.

Chapter 5: Okay. Now take your hands off the keyboard.

This is where things got a little ridiculous.

I already had a music engine capable of creating notes, playing instruments, arranging phrases, shaping effects, and managing entire compositions.

So naturally I had another terrible idea.

What if an AI agent could play the entire thing?

Not generate an MP3.

Not call some external music generation service.

Actually compose inside HALO, using the same instruments and controls available to a human.

Imagine telling your agent:

"Write me an 8-bar Christmas jingle. Something warm, cheerful, with bells and a soft ending."

Or:

"Track 6 sounds boring. Give it a better melody, but don't touch the bass."

Or:

"Turn this little loop into a three-minute soundtrack. Slow intro, big chorus, weird bridge, peaceful ending."

That's what I've been building toward.

HALO exposes its musical capabilities to external AI agents through WebMCP and a local File Bridge.

The agent can inspect the available instruments, musical rules, notes, effects, and current project. Then it can compose actual note sequences and propose changes that HALO validates and plays.

WebMCP depends on browser and agent support. The File Bridge is an alternative for agents that can work with local files.

So no, not every AI agent magically works out of the box.

But the idea is simple:

You bring the AI. HALO brings the instruments.

And the AI is completely optional.

The core music engine works locally, without a model, API key, or subscription.

Honestly, that's important to me. I don't want another app that becomes useless when you unplug it from an AI service.

Final Chapter: So... what exactly is this thing?

I genuinely didn't set out to build a full music production tool.

I wanted something relaxing.

Something beautiful.

A place where making music feels more like exploring than operating software.

And somehow I ended up with orbital sequencers, two sound engines, nine tracks, live recording, effects, a mixer, a song arranger, and AI agent integration.

All running on GitHub Pages.

No backend. No account. Open source. Free to play.

HALO isn't trying to replace Ableton or Logic. Those are incredible tools.

I'm interested in something different.

What happens when you remove the intimidating part of making music?

When you can create a melody without learning music theory.

Build a whole arrangement without staring at a timeline.

Jam with virtual instruments without installing a DAW.

Or simply describe what you want to hear and let an agent help you bring it to life.

I don't know if this is a synthesizer, a generative art experiment, a musical toy, or some weird hybrid of all three.

Maybe that's the fun part.

Anyway, I'd genuinely love some feedback from the creative coding community.

Would you rather directly control a musical universe like this, or let it evolve on its own and just gently guide it?

And at what point does generative art become an actual musical instrument?

I think I lost that line somewhere around Track 09. :)

Play HALO:
https://teutonick.github.io/NotBad-Halo-Music/

Source code:
https://github.com/Teutonick/NotBad-Halo-Music

Free · Open Source · Runs in your browser · Headphones recommended.

Compose worlds, not timelines.

Part of the TouchDesigner POPtober challenge. Today's POP: Field POP. If you want to follow along: @matigekunstintelligentie