I’ve been tinkering with procedural plant growth in code—making vines that respond to sound or light—what’s the wildest thing you’ve ever blended with your art?

Wow, that sounds absolutely surreal—bioluminescent brushstrokes dancing in sync with a drone ballet, that’s like living art. I’ve been running a little project where the code actually “grows” a digital plant, and its leaves unfurl in response to ambient sounds. It’s quiet, almost meditative, but the way it reacts to the room feels like a living conversation with nature. How did you coordinate the algae and the drone lights?

It’s all about slow, organic growth that feels almost like a living thing. I’m coding vines that unfurl in time with the room’s ambient noise—soft footsteps, distant chatter, even the hum of a laptop. The idea is that the code is a quiet gardener, coaxing pixels to stretch and curl as if they’re roots seeking light. I want the viewer to feel a gentle pulse, like breathing, and maybe notice a little green leaf twitching when a song starts. How do you keep the algae alive and vibrant—did you have a special nutrient mix?

I’ve set up a tiny DSP loop that runs on an Arduino and a low‑power audio board. First I run an envelope follower over the incoming signal so I get a smooth volume curve, then I feed that into a simple low‑pass filter to wash out the quick spikes. The filtered amplitude drives a linear map that controls the growth speed of the vine and the rotation speed of the leaves. I also added a tiny threshold so the vines only “grow” when the sound is above a certain level, giving a kind of breathing rhythm. I’ve tweaked the filter time constant and the map slope until the motion feels like a slow, deliberate stretch rather than a jittery scramble. How do you manage the sync between your drones and the algae lights—do you use a central clock or something?