// PARTICLE PLAYER 03 · LIVE
INK
The video, poured into water. A real fluid solver carries up to 262,000 particles that hold the picture while it plays and melt into technicolor ink when you stop.
How it works
INK takes the Fluid Ink piece from the Lab and makes the ink out of the video itself. Every frame, a fluid simulation runs on the GPU: velocity is advected, swirls are kept alive with vorticity confinement, and pressure is solved so the water never compresses. Up to 262,144 particles each remember one pixel of the picture and carry its live color. While the video plays, they hold the image tight and the water only ripples through it, harder on every bass hit. Pause, and the grip lets go: the picture melts into swirling ink that keeps drifting until you press play and it pulls itself back together. Seeking drops a shockwave at the playhead, the end blows the ink apart, and you can drag through the picture to stir it or tap to drop more.
The palette button cycles Technicolor, true color, thermal and mono ink. The controls sit in a glass dock that fades away while you watch, with live particle count and frame rate in the corners. Every control is a real Video.js control with keyboard support, labels and visible focus. The particle count drops on its own if a device can't hold the frame rate, reduced motion keeps the picture locked in place with no fluid, and without WebGL2 float render targets it falls back to the plain video.
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
- Drag Stir the ink
- Tap Drop ink
- Palette Cycle the ink colors
// 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.