Josh Weihnacht
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Games & Experiments
Reactive Ecology
(aka Version 1.0)
Java Applet  |  Sept 1998

To play, click or drag the mouse on the screen below.


INSTRUCTIONS:
To play, click or drag the mouse on the screen below.


In this project (which could be called a game except that there is no way to win or lose), you can "scratch off" the surface of the screen to reveal information about both the design of and the current state of the project. However, simulated organisms come along to cover up your discoveries. Worse yet, they feed off the "erasure areas" that allow you to reveal the information beneath. Thus, the more you of the screen that you clear up, the faster the organism reproduce . Do nothing and they will starve and become all but extinct, but you won't be able to see much of what is beneath. In this way a self-regulating system is created. You can always reveal at least part of the screen but you can never reveal the entire screen at once.

Included by the new media art journal Switch in their Web Art Taxonomy back when the project had the more self-reflexive title of "Version 1.0".

Technical Notes / Apologies:
Its not your imagination, the creatures do get much faster when you start dragging your mouse. This is the unfortunate result of a hack. When this was orginally created, it was too CPU intensive when you dragged your mouse for the creatures to move at a normal speed. Thus, the code speeds up the creatures when you drag your mouse to compensate and make them move at a normal speed. Fast forward to the present and with current computers the creatures move much too fast when you drag your mouse now. Also, it seems like I'm not releasing a sound resource correctly. Sorry :(