Lightshade

Art · 2026

ASCII Flux

Shuffling ASCII glyphs as a real-time post-process over a rotating cube.

Statement

A study in legibility at the threshold of noise — type that is always resolving and never quite settling.

Each frame, source luminance is quantised into a glyph from a hand-tuned ramp, then perturbed by temporal noise so the field shimmers between order and static.

Originally a real-time TouchDesigner network, re-implemented here in WebGL so the field reacts to you — the cursor sheds little shockwaves of corruption through the glyphs.

Technique

  • Glyph-atlas ASCII post-process (GPU)
  • Luminance → glyph-density ramp
  • Temporal shuffle + cursor-driven displacement

Tools: TouchDesigner, GLSL, WebGL

View on Instagram