Fractal Tree

Watch Fractal Tree live in the browser

A sumi-e ink tree stands on rice paper under a vermilion sun, with a mountain wash on the horizon. Its trunk forks into two branches, each of those forks again, eleven levels deep, and the tips end in five-petal blossoms.

It is a classic recursive binary tree: every branch ends in two shorter children turned left and right by the same rule. Instead of drawing every branch, each pixel walks down the tree, at every fork stepping into the frame of the child on its side, so eleven levels cost eleven steps. The ink has a wet edge and a drier inside, and the whole tree sways on a clock that runs with the music.

What it reacts to

• Bass: opens the fork angle and swells the sun
• Treble: splays the crown further toward the tips
• Mids: lean the tree lopsided
• Spectrum: each blossom reads its own bin, bass on the left of the crown and treble on the right, and grows and deepens in colour with it
• Kick drum: shakes loose a flurry of petals that tumble to the ground

Tune

Branch spread scales the fork angles, Blossoms sets how much the tips flower and how visible the falling petals are, and Blossom picks the flower colour.

Music that suits it

Acoustic, jazz or lo-fi tracks with full mids and highs bloom across the whole crown, and a clear kick drum adds regular falls of petals.

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 Fractal Tree in the WebGL presets, or press ← → on the page until it comes up.