Click in any of the black boxes below and observe the resulting pattern. Keep clicking along the top and along the side until you get something interesting. Use your Refresh button whenver you want to start over from scratch. (Hint: what kind of patterns do you get if you always fill groups of 2 or 3 boxes in a row and always leave groups of 2 or 3 unfilled?)
Responsivness may be a little sluggish in some browsers, so please try a different browser if you have problems.
Yes, this is related to weaving. I believe that all patterns generated by the above can be woven on a 4-harness loom and I am right now (May 2013) in the process of verifying that.
This page is a simplistic web version of a piece of a Mac application called WaveWeaver™ which I wrote years ago but have not yet had the time to update so it can run on MacOSX except as a Classic 68K application, which nowadays is so limiting that few people would be able to run it. I hope to create an updated rewrite in the next year.
WaveWeaver™ was in turn inspired by work I originally did using digital hardware for pattern generation displayed on an oscilloscope, in which I discovered "weaving patterns" emerging by accident when I was trying to do something else entirely.
There is software available to simulate weaving in more useful ways than what this page is capable of. The intention of this page, and even moreso the software on which is loosely modelled is quite different from that of weaving software, being oriented toward optimizing various processes for dynamic interaction with patterns as a means of exploring pattern spaces.
Please email me if you are interested in anything described here or in WaveWeaver™ should I make it available again.
And although there are practical limits to what JavaScript can do on a web page, I also intend to improve the demo above as time permits.
The background images on the current page and on this page as well as several other pages on this site were created using WaveWeaver™.
I am working on a multi-color version of the above demo, which you can try by clicking here.
JavaScript source and algorithms on this page are Copyright © 1989-2013 Kurt Karl Bigler, All Rights Reserved.