This swell little visual toy by Koalas to the Max came via Michael Warren of  Mike and Molly’s House. If you scroll your pointer over the image above, you’ll set it in motion. Being an ardently curious soul, Michael checked out its source code and made an interesting discovery:

It turns out it’s built with a javascript library called D3. As far as I can tell it’s a library that uses data to render graphics in a compu-magical sort of way. I guess the original intent was to help make charts, visualizations and other forms of information graphing.

There are a bunch of examples of things people have done with it here. Some interesting stuff and pretty experimental.  I didn’t look at them all but check out “OMG Particles” and “Square Circle Spiral Illusion“. They are pretty neat. 

Really neat! We love that what started as a code to make charts turned into code to make…………………………………??????????????? (Keep splitting the circles to get a surprise!)

We especially love Collision Detection; it’s got a curiously mellow flow, like being the ocean.

For visual music synthesizers, check out The great ToneMatrix and Pulsate.

With big thanks to Michael for showing us how to get the code onto our page.

Related posts: make music all weekend long!!!
weekend music and games: national jukebox + monopoly revised
kraftwerk mixtape + their new music generating app
bbc’s astonishing world music archive
a kids’ drawing program for adults

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One thought on “unexpectedly cool, relaxing visual digital ‘toys’

  1. The coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time!

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