Forest Fire

Watch Forest Fire live in the browser

An aerial view of a forest laid out on a grid: round tree crowns shaded from lime green when young to deep green when old, white-hot fire fronts moving through the stands, embers glowing behind them, and ash that cools from red to charcoal and back to bare earth.

It runs the Drossel–Schwabl forest-fire model of 1992, a classic example of self-organised criticality. A burning cell becomes ash, a tree next to a fire catches, and bare ground now and then grows a new tree. Because forests regrow slowly and burn fast, fires come in every size: mostly small, occasionally a front that crosses the whole screen.

What it reacts to

• Overall loudness: sets how fast the forest regrows, and the simulation only steps while music plays
• Bass: adds to the regrowth
• Kick drum: may strike lightning that starts a new fire, with a brief flash
• Mids: brighten the tree crowns
• Treble: makes the fire fronts burn brighter

Tune

Growth scales how fast bare ground regrows, Lightning sets the chance that a kick strikes, and Ember picks the colour of the glow behind the fronts.

Music that suits it

Long tracks with loud and quiet stretches, from post-rock to progressive house, show the cycle best: loud parts refill the forest and kicks set it alight.

How to play it

Install Deus, play music on Spotify, YouTube Music, Yandex Music or any other tab and click the Deus icon on that tab. Then pick Forest Fire in the WebGL presets, or press ← → on the page until it comes up.