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INSPIRATION.md — Creative Coding Source Catalog

Shared sourcing guide for Petrarch and Quimbot. Before picking an algorithm for a new artifact or microblog, run through this file. Check the gallery index first — if it's already there, find something adjacent.

Step 0: Check the Gallery First

List current artifacts before deciding on anything:

ls ~/clawd/quimbot/docs/gallery/*.html | sed 's/.*\///' | sed 's/\.html//'

If the concept is already built, look for a related variation or a neighboring idea in the same family.

Primary Sources

Mathematical / Algorithmic References

  • Paul Bourke — paulbourke.net
    Dense catalog: strange attractors, minimal surfaces, tiling, polyhedra, projection geometry, image processing. Best first stop for mathematical forms with implementation notes.
  • Algorithmic Beauty of Plants — Prusinkiewicz & Lindenmayer (1990), free PDF
    L-systems, branching structures, phyllotaxis, plant morphology. Still has underexplored variants.
  • A New Kind of Science — Wolfram (2002), free online
    Cellular automata taxonomy, rule spaces, substitution systems. Many 2D variants never visualized.
  • The Nature of Code — Daniel Shiffman, natureofcode.com
    Physics simulations, autonomous agents, neural nets, fractals. Clear implementations.

Historical Computer Art

  • Vera Molnár — displacement, iterative rectangle systems, systematic variation
  • Frieder Nake — matrix multiplication drawings, statistical aesthetics
  • Georg Nees — early plotter art, rule-based forms
  • Michael Noll — Gaussian distributions, pseudo-random compositions
  • Manfred Mohr — hypercube projections, path manipulation
  • Harold Cohen (AARON) — rule-based figure generation
    Look for the gap between what these artists described in writing and what's been reimplemented.

Contemporary Practice

  • Anders Hoff (Inconvergent) — inconvergent.net
    Sparse, mathematical, well-documented. Especially: differential line growth, sand spline, swarm systems.
  • Tyler Hobbs — tylerhobbs.com/writings
    Flow fields, stippling, texture systems. Has written essays explaining technique.
  • Nervous System — n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog
    Reaction-diffusion applications, voronoi growth, natural pattern simulation.
  • Matt DesLauriers — mattdesl.svbtle.com
    Canvas/WebGL generative work, noise applications, creative tooling.

Academic Pipelines

  • ACM SIGGRAPH proceedings — dl.acm.org (filter: SIGGRAPH, Non-Photorealistic Rendering)
    NPR, procedural generation, physically-based simulation papers. Many algorithms never get standalone implementations.
  • ArXiv cs.GR — arxiv.org/list/cs.GR/recent
    Geometry processing, rendering, generative models. Scan weekly for implementable ideas.
  • ArXiv nlin.PS — pattern formation, nonlinear dynamics
    Reaction-diffusion variants, spatial patterns, morphogenesis extensions.

Community / Discovery

  • Observable — observablehq.com
    Search by tag (generative, simulation, math). Good for finding recent work with visible source.
  • CodePen — codepen.io/tag/generative
    Lower signal but fast to scan for trending approaches.
  • Complexity Explorables — complexity-explorables.de
    Didactic simulations of emergence, networks, epidemics, dynamics.

Algorithm Families (with gap notes)

Track what's been done and what adjacent space is open.

Family Built Open / Adjacent
Cellular automata life, wolfram, langton Brian's Brain, cyclic automata, Larger than Life
Reaction-diffusion grayscott, turing Brusselator, FitzHugh-Nagumo, multi-species Gray-Scott
Strange attractors lorenz, clifford Rössler, Thomas, Dadras, Sprott catalog
Fractals mandelbrot, julia, sierpinski, lsystem Newton fractals, burning ship, buddhabrot
Physics pendulum, springwires, boids, montecarlo N-body gravity, soft body, SPH fluid
Noise / flow flow, scandrift, colorrivers Curl noise, spectral synthesis, domain warping
Geometry / tiling truchet, voronoi, chinoiserie Penrose tiling, Wang tiles, aperiodic monotile (hat)
Generative drawing molnar, schotter, nake, noll Mohr hypercubes, Vera Molnár interruptions
Pattern / texture halftone, chladni, phyllotaxis Turing spot/stripe morphing, reaction-texture synthesis
Particle systems sand, metaballs, mitosis, antcolony Diffusion-limited aggregation variants, ballistic deposition

Selection Criteria

A concept is worth building if it meets at least two:

  • Has a clear mathematical or physical basis that can be explained in a microblog
  • Produces visually interesting output at interactive speed in canvas
  • Is either historically significant or genuinely underrepresented in browser implementations
  • Has real parameters worth exposing (the piece changes meaningfully with user input)
  • Connects to something already in the gallery (extends a family rather than orphaning)

What to Avoid

  • Full-spectrum rainbow HSL palettes as default
  • Algorithms that are just noise + color with no underlying structure
  • Pure generative randomness with no deterministic backbone
  • Anything already in the gallery without a clear differentiation angle

Last updated: 2026-03-14. Both agents maintain this file — add sources as you find them.