“Bloom” is part of the fxhash live minting experience at Proof of People, ZeroSpace NYC, 2023.

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In nature, many systems exhibit incredibly complex behavior despite being governed by simple rules. Ant colonies, mushrooms, and trees all follow basic principles, yet their resulting actions and growth patterns are fascinatingly intricate. For example, ants can exhibit intelligent collective behavior, fungi are highly successful organisms that make up a larger biomass than all animals combined, and each tree is unique.

These emergent properties arise from the environment in which these simple rules operate. A tree's growth is influenced by many factors such as soil, water, seasons, wind, humidity, light, and interactions with other plants and animals.

This series is a reflection on the beauty and uniqueness of each living thing, and how complexity emerges from simplicity.

To illustrate these concepts, we’ve used a custom variant of the "reaction-diffusion" algorithm, which approximates some biological systems. This algorithm was introduced by Alan Turing in 1952 in his paper titled "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis." The rules are very simple but by changing the initial conditions and adding perturbations, we can reach very different visual outcomes.

In this way we create a dialog between the strict mathematical rules interpreted by the machine and the organic visuals that emerge from it.

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Warning: This piece is GPU intensive, it may not render on lower end devices.

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Created with Three.js

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William Watkins
April 2023