Generative Arts | Katherine Chen

My generative works emerge at the intersection of code, perception, and motion.
Working across TouchDesigner, Max/MSP + Jitter, Blender, and C4D, and developing custom systems through Python, JavaScript (p5.js), GLSL shaders, and OpenGL logic, I create real-time audiovisual environments where geometry, sound, and light behave as living matter.

Each project becomes a temporal structure—particles drift under simulated forces, shaders sculpt light into form, and motion dissolves into color and noise. These works reflect my ongoing inquiry into digital materiality and sensory computation, exploring how algorithmic systems can evoke presence, impermanence, and emotion within computational space.

涌 (Yǒng) / Surge

《涌》 (Surge) is a generative visual experiment built with TouchDesigner’s GLSL-based fluid simulation system. The work visualizes the continuous transformation of virtual matter—streams of color, heat, and light—driven by internal turbulence and motion forces. Through real-time pressure, advection, and velocity mapping, the piece creates a living, breathing field of flow that blurs the boundary between fluid physics and visual poetry. Conceptually, 涌 reflects the tension between chaos and coherence—between the impulse to expand and the inevitability of dissipation. It continues your research into generative motion, emergent systems, and the aesthetics of dynamic equilibrium.

Luminous Currents / 光流

A generative visual study of energy, motion, and impermanence.

Luminous Currents is a real-time fluid simulation exploring the behavior of digital matter as it flows, collides, and dissolves within an infinite feedback field. This work visualizes energy as a living continuum—shifting endlessly between form and void.

Conceptually, it reflects on the impermanence of energy and perception. Each movement fades as another arises, evoking a meditative rhythm between creation and disappearance. The piece continues your ongoing research into generative motion, fluid aesthetics, and the sensory poetics of transformation.

Transient Plexus (瞬息之网)

A generative visualization of fleeting connection and digital motion.

Transient Plexus explores the tension between order and dissolution within a field of moving particles. Using pseudo-plexus dynamics, points of light weave transient networks that appear, fracture, and fade—echoing the instability of connection in both digital and human systems. Each motion becomes an act of emergence, a momentary structure born from chaos.

The work reflects on the fragility of connection in the age of data and algorithmic mediation. Through the interplay of motion, fragmentation, and reformation, Transient Plexus transforms computation into a metaphor for impermanence—where every pattern exists only for an instant before dissolving into new configurations.

微尘之庭 The Garden

A generative point-cloud environment exploring growth, memory, and digital ecology.

The Garden constructs an ever-evolving ecosystem of light and motion using point-cloud data and particle-based simulation. Each frame grows, disperses, and regenerates like digital vegetation—an algorithmic landscape that mirrors organic rhythms of life and decay. Through subtle shifts in color and density, the work evokes a breathing environment where form and emptiness continuously coexist.

Reconstruction Series 01
Foreset

A generative point-cloud composition of space, memory, and material reconstruction.

This series captures real environments through 3D scanning and point-cloud reconstruction, transforming physical landscapes into fragmented digital terrains. Each scan becomes both document and abstraction—a reassembled memory suspended between reality and simulation.

Reconstruction Series 02
Bloom Remnants

A generative point-cloud composition of perception, decay, and algorithmic memory.

Bloom Remnants transforms a bouquet into a dynamic field of particles using blob tracking and real-time generative mapping. Each petal dissolves into clusters of motion, forming a living structure that constantly redefines its own boundaries. Between presence and disappearance, the work reimagines the flower as data—a transient organism suspended between image and memory.

Reconstruction Series 03
Dust Bloom (尘之花)

A generative point-cloud composition evoking the fragility of motion and form.

Dust Bloom transforms millions of particles into a cloud of fleeting color and motion. Through point-cloud simulation and noise-driven dispersion, the piece visualizes the moment where presence becomes absence—where matter dissolves into breath. It continues an exploration of digital impermanence, tracing how data, like dust, can bloom and vanish within a single gesture.

Vanishing Form (消逝之形)

A minimal point-cloud study on boundary, dissolution, and emergence.

Vanishing Form explores the tension between containment and dispersal through a simple cubic boundary filled with particles in motion. The form appears, holds, and gradually dissolves—an ephemeral structure caught between geometry and void. It reflects on the digital body’s impermanence and the quiet beauty of disappearance.

Soliloquy of Flowers（花的独白）

Soliloquy of Flowers transforms natural blossoms through blob tracking and dissolving visual mapping, creating an ever-shifting field between form and abstraction. The petals distort, collapse, and reassemble—each motion an echo of both blooming and fading. The piece reflects on how algorithms perceive beauty and impermanence, turning the act of seeing itself into a fragile performance.

Deconstruction Series I — City of Dissolution

A minimal point-cloud study on boundary, dissolution, and emergence.

Deconstruction Series II — Coral Variations

Coral Variations explores coral-like structures through blob tracking, feedback distortion, and fluid displacement. The three variations—growth, bloom, and erosion—represent different temporal states of organic life translated into code. Each form grows and dissolves in cycles, evoking an ecosystem where algorithmic and biological processes intertwine.

Abyssal Terrain（深渊之地）

A GPU-driven particle terrain evoking the pulse of the underwater world.

Abyssal Terrain explores the morphing textures of digital landscapes through a GPU-based particle terrain system. Flowing across a virtual seabed, the particles simulate organic currents and sedimentary motion, transforming code into an oceanic topography. The piece reflects on the unseen dynamism of deep environments—where movement, erosion, and regeneration coexist in endless rhythm.

Frozen Flow（凝流）

A generative study of frozen motion and glass-like fluidity.

Frozen Flow captures the tension between movement and stillness through GPU-driven particle fluid simulation.
Light and color refract across a frozen surface of motion, forming a crystalline landscape where liquid and solid coexist.

Ephemera Series /瞬息星尘系列

Ephemera I – Grid of Light

A generative exploration of light, motion, and cosmic impermanence.

Visualizes the emergence and disappearance of digital matter through subtle lattices of light and noise. Each spark is a fragment of presence—appearing only to fade into void.

Ephemera II – Spiral Motion

Simulates the formation of a cosmic vortex through circular particle motion and field distortion, reflecting the endless rhythm of expansion and collapse within space-time.

Algorithmic Mandala Series

This series explores algorithmic symmetry, recursion, and mathematical rhythm through code-based drawing. Using p5.js, geometric patterns evolve into mandala-like forms that balance precision and intuition

Chromatic Geometry

A generative visual study inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract compositions. Using geometry, color, and motion as expressive elements, the system generates evolving spatial dialogues of balance, tension, and rhythm. It reinterprets Kandinsky’s visual language through algorithmic structure—where composition becomes a living process rather than a fixed image.

Time Grid

A visual meditation on temporal flow and memory.
Each frame captures a fragment of motion, arranged as a grid of evolving instants—
a choreography of transformation within stillness.

Volumetric Displacement

A GPU-based particle structure oscillating between solid and void.

This piece explores the boundary between solidity and dissolution through GPU-driven particle displacement. Each cube acts as a voxel of light and motion, forming a breathing digital organism. The surface continuously folds and unfolds under field dynamics, evoking both architectural tessellation and biological pulse.

鎏 Lustre

Lustre unfolds as a meditation on liquid light — a real-time particle-based fluid simulation that transforms motion into molten radiance. Each particle behaves like a fragment of time, dispersing and coalescing in shimmering waves.

澜 Lan

Lan visualizes the algorithmic ocean — fluid, luminous, and unbounded. Built on particle emission and turbulence fields, the system transforms motion into wave, and wave into breath.

绦 — Silk Flux

Silk Flux visualizes the tension between turbulence and grace through a procedural particle flow rendered in real-time

烁 — Color Displace

Color Displace is a real-time generative composition built entirely in TouchDesigner, where displacement maps drive chromatic turbulence across a violet field. The simulation fuses noise displacement with dynamic lighting to create a painterly illusion of depth — a surface that ripples, folds, and dissolves into glowing mist.

Katherine Chen