A seed-based generative system for tangled looping line compositions.

A catalogue of computational textile compositions for fashion, textile and surface design — algorithmically drawn, seed-documented, and ready for production.

Ephemeral Whirls is a generative design system rather than a single artwork. Each composition is built from two dozen small agents — "loopers" — that wander across the frame in a slowly curving path. Every now and then, a looper decides to loop: it enters a slow spin, completes a full circle, and returns to its wandering. Over two thousand steps, the loopers leave a tangled, coloured field of lines.

The system is designed for:

• Fashion houses adapting wandering-line ornament for apparel and accessories
• Textile studios developing repeat patterns and yardage
• Surface designers working across print, wallpaper, and interior applications

Every composition can be licensed, adapted, or commissioned to a brief.

A line, when it is wandering rather than drawn, becomes a whirl — tangled, patient, quietly yours.

The wandering line — irregular, patient, endlessly variable — has always carried the trace of a body in motion. From the trailing thread of a spider to the meander of a river, the looping stroke is one of the oldest forms of drawn computation we have. Ephemeral Whirls translates that motion into code. Each composition begins with a small set of agents and unfolds through continuous wandering, spontaneous looping, and colour-shifting, until the frame fills with a tangled whirl.

The palette, the number of loopers, the number of steps, and the orientation of the whole field are all derived from a single numeric seed.

Like the other still volumes in this series (Girih, Arachne, Celestial Grove, ChaotiColor, Citrus Mosaic, Crazy Knight Curve, Crazy Knight Line, Crazy Letter, cyPollock, Digital Pollen, Draconic Fractals, Dreamscape Watercolors, Elliott Waves, Ellipses, Enigma Sudoku), Ephemeral Whirls is a static composition. The plate, the framed plate, the surfaces, and the archive are all static frames. A whirl is something you read; its character is stillness, not motion.

• Seed-based generation — every composition is defined by a numeric seed and can be regenerated exactly
• Deterministic output — the same seed always produces the same composition
• Wandering loopers — 23 to 24 autonomous agents, each with its own heading, speed, and sin-offset
• Spontaneous looping — each looper occasionally enters a slow spin, completing a full circle before continuing
• Colour-shifting — each looper picks a colour from a palette; when it exits the frame it re-enters with a new colour
• Forty-six palettes — from duotone to eight-colour schemes, tuned for vivid contrast against light backgrounds
• Twenty-two background tones — soft, pale fields that let the coloured traces read as threads
• Orientation rotation — the entire composition can be rotated 0°, 90°, 180°, or 270° based on the seed
• Adaptive surfaces — one seed applied across print, scarf, textile, and wall formats
• Archive — eight curated seeds available for immediate loading
• Download — export the composition as a high-resolution PNG
• Keyboard shortcuts — R for new seed, S to save

.
├── index.html          # Main catalogue page
├── images/
│   ├── fav.svg         # Favicon
│   ├── tote.png        # Mockup: tote bag
│   ├── tee.png         # Mockup: t-shirt
│   └── cushion.png     # Mockup: cushion
└── README.md

A numeric seed (a large integer) initializes a deterministic pseudo-random generator. From this seed, the system derives:

• Background colour (from a palette of 22 light tones)
• Looper palette (from a set of 46 colour schemes)
• Number of loopers (23 or 24)
• Number of iterations (2,000 to 4,000)
• Orientation (up, down, right, or left)

Because the generator is deterministic, the same seed always produces the same composition — on any device, at any time.

Each composition runs a small simulation:

1. Initialize. Each looper starts at the left edge of the frame at a random y-position. It gets its own speed, its own sin-offset (for the wobble), its own looping speed, and its own colour from the palette.
2. Wander. On each step, the looper updates its heading with a small random perturbation, then moves one step forward in the direction of its heading.
3. Loop (occasionally). If the looper is past 25% of the frame width, there is a 1% chance per step that it will enter a "looping" state. In that state, its heading advances steadily, so it spins through a full circle.
4. Exit loop. Once a looping looper has passed through π radians and comes back near 0 or 2π, it exits the loop and resumes wandering.
5. Re-enter. If a looper drifts off the edge of the frame, it respawns at the left edge with a new colour.

Over 2,000 to 4,000 steps, the loopers collectively leave thousands of small line segments — a dense, tangled trace across the frame.

Two colour systems meet in every composition:

• Twenty-two background tones — soft, pale fields: white smoke, electric blue, magic mint, tea green, light orange, neon yellow, sage, cotton candy, rose quartz, pastel violet, powder pink, cornsilk, robin egg blue, and more.
• Forty-six looper palettes — each palette is a small family of two to eight vivid colours, tuned for maximum contrast against the light background. Palettes range from duotone pairs to full eight-colour rainbows.

Each looper picks one colour from the palette and draws its segment in that colour. When it respawns after leaving the frame, it picks a new colour — so the composition reads as a woven field of threads, each thread contributing one colour of the whole.

Every composition has an orientation, chosen by the seed:

This small variation gives each composition its own sense of direction — some read as horizontal fields, others as vertical.

The same seed is rendered across four surface formats. These are static frames — they represent the print-ready composition.

Each surface uses the same underlying seed and structural logic — only the repeat, orientation, and scale change.

Like the rest of the still volumes, Ephemeral Whirls does not animate. The plate is a single frozen frame — the composition is complete the moment it is generated.

This is a deliberate design choice. A whirl is not a swarm. It is not a rotation. It is a trace, laid down once and left. Its stillness is what makes it print-ready in the strictest sense: what you see is what you get.

1. Open index.html in any modern browser.
2. Click New Seed to generate a new composition.
3. Click Download to save the composition as a PNG.
4. Scroll to the Archive section and click any plate to load it into Plate 001.

Each composition is identified by an 8-digit seed label displayed in the metadata panel. To reproduce a specific composition, note the seed and regenerate it programmatically:

const rng = new RandomGenerator(seed);
const features = buildFeatures(rng);
renderComposition(canvas, features, rng);

Because the generator is deterministic, this will produce the identical composition on any device.

• No build step. The system is a single HTML file with inline CSS and JavaScript.
• No dependencies. All drawing is done with the native Canvas 2D API.
• Deterministic. The RandomGenerator class uses a xorshift-based PRNG seeded by an integer, so identical seeds produce identical outputs.
• Static rendering. Every canvas renders a single frame. There is no animation loop. The whole simulation (2,000–4,000 steps) runs inside a single render pass.
• Feature isolation. Cover, framed plate, surfaces, and archive thumbnails each derive their own feature set from their own local RNG, without disturbing the main plate's state.
• Clean RNG passing. Each Looper receives its own RNG reference, so simulations never share state. Every canvas runs its own independent whirl.
• Bounded wandering. Loopers respawn when they leave the frame, so no looper can escape or run indefinitely.
• Responsive. The layout adapts from large desktop down to very small mobile devices (tested at 360px viewport width).
• Accessible. Supports prefers-reduced-motion. Pinch-zoom is enabled.

Tested in current versions of:

• Chrome / Edge
• Firefox
• Safari (desktop and iOS)

All Ephemeral Whirls compositions are seed-documented and available for licensing across textile, surface, and print applications.

• Standard licenses cover single-product production runs.
• Commercial use, custom editions, or exclusive rights are available on request.

Each license is issued against a specific seed ID. Regeneration of the same seed produces the identical composition — ensuring reproducibility between artist, studio, and manufacturer.

For licensing enquiries: [email protected]

Ephemeral Whirls is a generative design system, not a fixed artwork. It can be adapted for specific briefs:

To begin a conversation: [email protected]

Ephemeral Whirls is part of a computational textile series. Each volume approaches ornament from a different structural angle:

The series is designed as a coherent whole — same page structure, same seed logic, same licensing and commission terms — so that each volume can be presented individually or as part of a larger body of work.

• Design & Generative System — Reyhaneh Daneshdoost
• Typefaces — Cormorant Garamond · DM Mono
• Platform — Reyrove Studio
• Edition — Ephemeral Whirls, Autumn 2026

Where technical obstacles were encountered, AI tools were used for debugging and code optimization. Every structural, aesthetic, and conceptual decision remained the artist's own.

• Website — reyrove.github.io
• Instagram — @rey._.rove
• LinkedIn — Reyhaneh Daneshdoost
• X — @reyrove

© Ephemeral Whirls · All compositions reproducible by seed · Computational Textile Design