THE FALL
About
waves upon waves upon waves
a single black pixel cascades and creates a landscape
entropy locked, uniform randomness drifts into recursive patterns
feedback creates cycles, cycles create cycles
life is a balance of living equilibria
This piece is a "non-constrained" reimagining of Entropy Generator—taking the core concept beyond the limitations of the original platform and exploring it at scale.
petite chute is a derivative work based on THE FALL.
Artist's Notes
This piece explores how a single seed pixel cascading through space creates emergent landscapes through feedback loops. The entropy locking (line 199: 999003 in 1000000 chance, roughly 0.1% reset probability) keeps the system from either stagnating or exploding into pure noise.
This algorithm is nice because it visually shows a gradient of entropy—you can see the regularity of the stripes decay over distance and time. But paradoxically, due to the entropy locking, it's not continuously random. Eventually a stable loop occurs. Then you can see the artifice. Even the "randomness" of it can be taken away, without really changing it much.
The "burn_color" function (lines 82-104) applies multiplicative decay with color-specific factors (rfac, gfac, bfac), creating the cascading effect as colors shift and descend. The directional factors (dfacs) determine how pixels propagate—creating the wave-like motion as information flows through the system.
The background color is dynamically calculated from the 25th percentile of pixel brightness (lines 210-226), keeping the frame harmonized with the content as it evolves. Every 120 frames for the first 3 cycles, it recalculates—after that, it stabilizes, letting the internal dynamics take over.
Technical Context
This was minted on Base using fxhash's onchain storage (onchfs). The entire generative code lives fully onchain—no IPFS, no external dependencies. The piece uses fxhash.js for RNG and entropy locking via their $fx.rand.reset() mechanism.
Controls
- p - Pause animation
- n - Resume animation
- s - Save PNG
Scales to any display size automatically (reloads page on resize).
Technical Notes
Built with p5.js and stored fully onchain via Base/onchfs. Features:
- Cascade simulation - Single pixel propagates creating emergent landscapes
- Entropy locking - 0.1% reset probability prevents chaos and stagnation
- Color decay system - Multiplicative burn with per-channel factors
- Dynamic background - Calculated from 25th percentile pixel brightness
- Feedback loops - System state influences future evolution
- Emergent equilibria - Eventually settles into stable repeating patterns
- Onchain storage - Fully stored on Base blockchain, no external dependencies
A non-constrained reimagining of Entropy Generator—the same core concepts explored at scale with p5.js instead of TIC-80's limitations. Designed for indefinite runtime as an ambient screensaver.