// PARTICLE PLAYER 02 · LIVE
SWARM
The video stays exactly as it is. The player around it is made of particles: a black hole, a cherry blossom storm, a murmuration of starlings, or a device you pick, rebuilding itself live.
How it works
SWARM keeps the picture untouched and builds everything around it from particles. The worlds are things only particles can make. In Event Horizon the video floats in front of a black hole: up to 50,000 particles orbit in an accretion disk, inner rings faster than outer ones the way real orbits work, and the far side of the disk is bent up over the top of the screen the way gravity bends light, with one side burning brighter from the Doppler effect. The photon ring around the screen fills with light as the video plays, pausing slows time to a crawl, seeking sends a gravitational wave through everything, and at the end the whole disk spirals into the hole.
In Sakura a branch arches over the screen at dusk and blooms flower by flower as the video plays, so the timeline is the tree. Petals tumble and flip on the wind, falling from the open blossoms, the bass sends gusts through them, and when you pause the wind dies and the petals drift down and pile up on the ground until you press play and blow them away. In Murmuration tens of thousands of starlings sweep across a sunset in living sheets; your cursor is the hawk and the flock tears open around it, pausing lands birds on the power lines while the rest circle in a tight ball, seeking startles them and the ending sends them away. The boombox, arcade, handheld and CRT TV designs are still there too.
Every control is a real Video.js control sitting on its particle icon, so keyboard, focus rings, screen readers, hotkeys and touch all work as usual, and D cycles the designs. Play flows into pause, mute into its cross and fullscreen into its exit icon. Particle video turns the picture into particles when you want it. Reduced motion stops the orbits, wind, flocking and swirling and holds every design still, and without WebGL2 the designs fall back to plain line art with normal icons.
Controls
- Space Play or pause
- ← → Seek 10 seconds
- ↑ ↓ Volume
- 0–9 Jump to 0–90%
- M Mute
- F Fullscreen
- 2× tap Sides seek, center goes fullscreen
- Design buttons Event horizon, Sakura, Murmuration or a device
- Hover Push the particles; in Murmuration you are the hawk
- D Next design
- Particle video Turn the picture into particles too
// THE BRANCH
Particle players. Each one turns the picture into something else.
- LIVE
SPILL
The movie lights the room.
Bias lighting for the web: 48 LEDs behind the TV throw the picture's colors across the wall.
- LIVE
SWARM
The player is made of light.
The video plays untouched inside a black hole, a cherry blossom storm or a murmuration of starlings.
- LIVE
INK
The video, poured into water.
A fluid solver carries the picture. Pause and it melts into technicolor ink.
- LIVE
EMBER
The picture burns.
Bright pixels shed embers that rise through the fluid and relight the frame.
- LIVE
GRAIN CINEMA
Every frame turns to light.
The video as a 3D point cloud you can orbit. The camera flies through it when you seek.
- CONCEPT
MURMURATION
Every cut is a flock.
Tens of thousands of birds settle into the picture, scatter on every scene cut, and regroup into the new shot.
- CONCEPT
GLYPH
Type is the pixel.
The picture drawn in live colored characters on stacked depth layers that tumble apart when you seek.
- CONCEPT
LIQUID CHROME
Mercury that remembers.
Particles that render as liquid metal reflecting the video. They pool when you pause and pull back into the frame on play.