Ars Technica

Ars Technica is an exploration of complexity through simplicity. The simplicity is the cube. The complexity is colour, distance, time, space, alignment, movement and repetition. Using only those constraints, we generate compelling three-dimensional scenes. Built with Sebastian Schmitt as Pixularity.

The project is rooted in a fascination with orthographic technical drawings used in industrial design — their selective marking, linear precision and silhouette-led aesthetic. We translate that visual language into a deterministic generator: each scene is composed of nested boxes governed by collision-detection and pathfinding rules so that nothing intersects, nothing overlaps, and every animation has internal logic. The result reads as chaotic at a glance but is, on closer look, meticulously planned.

Each scene is parameterised by a 64-character hash that seeds the entire system — layout, palette, animation timing, sketch lines, dimension lines, frame and noise. There are 24 layouts, 27 colour palettes, and several layers of variation on top, so the combinatorial space is enormous. The scene above is generated fresh every time the page loads. Hit "Generate new" to roll another.

Built with: Three.js, TypeScript, custom collision detection & pathfinding, ArtBlocks-style hash-seeded PRNG (sfc32).