David's Blague

I'm immensely satisfied Processing's ability to make pictures. Today's installation is something I like to call Green Goo (tm). It's much the same as previous applets in that it uses local rules to update each pixel. In this one, we start with a randomly dispersed field of green stuff on a gray background. Each pixel of green stuff looks at its neighboring pixels, and asks each of them, "how many of your neighboring pixels have green stuff in them?" The pixel then tallies the results and if the results are between eight and eighteen, it stays (or turns) green itself.

The code takes some shortcuts, so the rule is less obvious than I would like, but I'm also running it on a slow laptop, so, alas, I needed a few shortcuts. The results of my noodling around can be seen here.

I'm well on my way toward having quite a gallery of these applets, with zebra stripes, coastlines, cow spots, ant tunnels, and now goo. If anyone would be interested in collaborating on making these more interesting or prettier, please drop me an email: dbrunton@gmail.com. Ha! Google catches spam so well that I can publish that here without even worrying.

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UPDATE: Click the pic to randomize, press space to start the goo gooing.

Labels: goo, pretty, processing, programming