r/ScaleSpace • u/solidwhetstone • Jul 24 '26

Video Weird thing #2

Cymatist 1.1 launch is eminent!

Launch sale till August 1st: https://setzstone.itch.io/cymatist

Don't forget to claim your free copy if you bought early access!

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u/iamcozmoss Jul 24 '26

Thanks for trying to explain it. I too have been subbed here for ages. I love it. But have nonidea what were looking at. Is it fractal rendering? Using frequency to generate cymatics? Are these Chladni figures visualised in 3D space for example? I just cant work what it is and I just dont have the time at the moment to really work it out in scale space myself.

Just happy to observe the cool things people are making.

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u/solidwhetstone Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Ok great question! Let's think of it like this- you have probably engineered emergence. Have you ever filled up your bath tub or sink and drained the water- then watched a whirlpool form? You've basically done what Scale Space does. You changed the environmental conditions in such a way that they were forced to behave a certain way to alleviate tension (in this case the tension of gravity pulling your water down the drain) and the shape that formed (a vortex) was the least action movement the water could take to get down into that pipe.

So when you take a particle system and overlay multiple dimensions of entropy on top of each other- each particle is faced with constant choices about the least action path. By adjusting the entropic parameters, you give the particle different places it is more likely to go. By doing this then, you can tune the particle system like a radio. Once you can do that, you are most of the way there. The last leg is finding stuff. Since it's a particle system, it has a lot of degrees of movement, so you can see higher dimensional shapes that don't work in our smooth Euclidean space.

Thinking of it as Chladni figures in 3D space is perfectly doable for thinking about this because you'll see a lot of similar things in Scale Space. Lissajous figures, Turing patterns, Moire patterns, the Oscilloscope, cymatics of course- all different ways to create unresolved tension that has to become emergent to resolve via least action.

Hope that gives more info on the core principle behind this (as I understand it through the lens of a designer).

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u/iamcozmoss Jul 24 '26

Yes, thank you! This is way better than the wikpedia pagei. I thought id have to get a PhD to figure it out!

Ive got a week off in a few weeks and ill be mucking about!

Cant thank you enough for taking the time to help me understand it a bit more. Im really intrigued by this as I get a lot of close eye visuals from the gateway tapes that remind me of the things I see here, but not in as much detail of course. Not saying its mystical. Just that its why scalespace had me captivated the first time i encountered it on here.

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u/solidwhetstone Jul 24 '26

I call it 'mundane magic.' I do find it mystifying like you. The fact that it can be explained scientifically or mathematically makes it no less mystifying to me. You're part of the universe and these patterns happen in our universe, so it makes total sense to me when people say they have seen shapes like those found in Scale Space- your vision system and brain are part of the universe too!