Data Matrix

How it works

Everything is one fragment shader working in whole device pixels, so lines are exactly one pixel wide and cells never blur. There are no images and no randomness at run time: every bar, bit and cell comes from an integer hash of its coordinates and of a quantised clock, hash(cell, ⌊t · rate⌋). That makes the piece deterministic — the same second always looks the same — while still reading as a torrent of data.

• Barcode — nine bands, each with its own bar width (1–6 px), density and scroll speed (some run backwards). Bands re-roll their pattern on their own slow clocks.
• Binary — a grid of 1-bit cells; each row updates at its own rate. Your pointer forces nearby cells on.
• Plot — stacked 1-pixel waveforms (sums of sines at hashed frequencies), sampled with dots, crossed by a scan line.
• Plane — binary cells projected onto a floor with z = k / (horizon − y), the pinhole-camera ground-plane mapping, scrolling toward you.
• Strata — the frame split into horizontal layers, each showing a different section, reshuffled on every cut.

The numbers are drawn on a second canvas with mix-blend-mode: difference, so white digits turn black wherever they cross white data — they can't vanish into it. Sound, when on, is a sine oscillator that jumps between octaves of 440 Hz on every cut, plus 3 ms white-noise clicks at barcode edges. Flash is capped at three inversions per second (the WCAG general-flash threshold), and is disabled entirely when your system asks for reduced motion.

Lineage

A study in the visual language of Ryoji Ikeda's data-driven audiovisual work — binary black/white, pixel precision, sine and click. It is not a recreation of any piece and is not affiliated with the artist.

Limits

• The data is synthetic — hashed, not measured. It looks like information; it carries none.
• Browsers block sound until you press the Sound button; some mobile browsers also mute it when the ringer switch is off.