Binary creatures

Need some quick framework to display your data (like, ehm, these)? Or you’re up to something completely different, like a new groundbreaking idea on creating artificial music (like this one, be sure to check out the video)? Processing can be what you’re looking for. Is a Java based programming language coming together with  a nice IDE (a plugin for Eclipse is also available), born to create images and animations and to support complex interactions with a very limited coding effort.

I used it to write a very tiny application (no more than 200 LOC) that simulates the life of….a dot (or, better, a couple of dots).

The dot is, as the word says, a dot, whose life is limited to some thousand of iterations. So, after wandering around the screen for a while, a dot just disappears.  But, sometimes, a dot replicates itself before vanishing, and the new one keeps tracing new paths in the dark dot’s universe (each dot leaves a bright blue trail that lasts forever).

Nobody knows the exact duration of a dot’s life,  nor whether it’s going to replicate: things just happen, like in the real world.

Needless to say, the pattern is different every time the application is restarted. In the picture, dots at different stages of evolution:

Here is the application (includes the source code): creatures.zip. Just unzip the content and launch ‘Creatures.exe’. Enjoy!