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Turing Art Generator

turing.odd.place · made by Jason Buchheim · produced by Odyssey Expeditions

Discover more Oddities at https://odd.placeGenerative art, games and science toys from the same workshop

What you're watching

Every picture here starts as random static. Each pixel holds a number between −1 and +1, and many times a second your graphics card updates every pixel by looking at the pixels around it: a small ring close by, which tends to agree with it, and a wider ring farther out, which tends to push the other way. That tug-of-war between close-range agreement and long-range opposition makes the static sort itself into blobs, stripes, rings and labyrinths, the same way spots and stripes form on animals.

Nothing is drawn by hand and no two runs are alike. What you see is the pattern finding its own shape, live.

Alan Turing's idea

In 1952 the mathematician Alan Turing showed how two chemicals, an activator and an inhibitor, could spontaneously produce the stripes, spots and spirals seen on animals. The key is that the inhibitor spreads faster than the activator: each spot of activity encourages itself nearby and suppresses activity farther away. These are now called Turing patterns, or reaction-diffusion patterns, and they are found on fish, shells, corals and seashells.

Jonathan McCabe's multi-scale method

In 2010 the Australian generative artist Jonathan McCabe ran several Turing patterns at once, each at a different size: tiny rings a few pixels across up to huge ones hundreds of pixels wide. At every pixel and every step, the scale that is least decided gets to move the pixel. The result is nested structure: large shapes made of corridors, made of rings, made of dots, all alive at once. This app is an interactive tribute to his technique; his own high-resolution images are well worth looking up.

How to use it

• ▶ / ⏸ (top right) starts and pauses. Seed in the menu starts over from fresh static.
• Speed is simulation steps per frame (1–15). Higher evolves faster; lower is smoother to watch.
• Scales is how many sizes compete (1–4). More scales give richer nesting.
• Step Size is how hard each pixel commits per step: larger is bolder and coarser, smaller is finer.
• Symmetry makes the starting static 2-, 4-, 6- or 8-fold symmetric. The pattern then evolves freely; for symmetry that lasts, use the Advanced panel.
• Palette picks one of 22 colorings. Most stretch the boundary zones, where the action is, into bands of color; B&W Greyscale is closest to McCabe's original figures.
• Kaleidoscope folds the view into 4–20 mirrored wedges. Only the display folds; the pattern keeps evolving underneath.
• Progressive Refine starts with only the finest scale and adds larger ones on a timer: fine texture forms first, then bigger structures gather it into shapes.
• ↧ saves a 2048 × 2048 picture of what's on screen.
• ⇧ Share makes a share page, records a clip for reels, or both (see Sharing below).

Advanced (McCabe) panel

Per-scale cyclic symmetry: instead of only seeding symmetrically, every ring sample is averaged around the center at that scale's symmetry, every step, so the pattern can never leave it. Give different scales different orders, for example 3-fold fine detail inside 9-fold large structure, and you get McCabe's diatom-like "mixture of symmetries".

Per-scale weights bias the competition: weight the fine scales up for more micro-detail, or the coarse ones for bigger forms. For the cleanest diatoms try Scales 4, Progressive Refine on Slow, and the "McCabe Fig 14" or "3/9 Split" preset.

Scale Color Mode gives each scale its own color; whenever a scale wins at a pixel, that pixel drifts toward its color, so the colors show which sizes shaped each region.

Sharing

• Post to Facebook and the other buttons create a page at turing.odd.place/s/… with your picture at 2048 × 2048, your clip if you made one, and a Grow your own like this button that opens these settings. Link previews show your actual picture.
• Record a clip films the art for 10–60 seconds as a vertical reel (1080 × 1920) or a square, optionally starting from fresh static so viewers see the pattern grow. You can keep adjusting settings while it records.
• Post clip as a Facebook reel… saves the clip and opens Facebook's reel creator with a caption and link ready to paste. On phones, Share clip… sends it straight to the Facebook or Instagram app.
• Shared settings grow a new pattern on the visitor's own graphics card, so it will be a sibling of yours, not a copy.

How it works

• On your GPU: WebGPU compute shaders where available (current Chrome, Edge, Safari), with WebGL2 and plain-CPU fallbacks. The chip in the menu shows which one is running.
• Field: a 1024 × 1024 grid (512 on smaller GPUs) that wraps around at the edges.
• Rings: each scale compares an activator ring with an inhibitor ring three times wider, from 2 to about 70 pixels across the four scales. The largest scale samples a 4× smaller copy of the field, which keeps its huge rings cheap.
• Keeping it lively: every 60 frames the field is re-spread across −1…+1 so it never drifts to one color.

About Odyssey Expeditions

Odyssey Expeditions has run marine biology adventure travel programs since 1995, sailing students through the Caribbean while they take part in real field research. The same kind of process this app simulates helps paint marine life: the spots of a leopard shark, the stripes of a clownfish, the branching of coral.

More Oddities at https://odd.placeXOR Bézier, Twin Grid Mosaic, Ring Lattice, Solaris, Spinyhead and more