The wall
Turn any screen into a living art wall.
The wall above fills the screen with Synapse Drip pieces that change by themselves: on a TV, a tablet, a phone or a computer display. Each piece is made live by the graphics chip, slowly drifts into variations of itself, and has its name fade in and out beneath it. Leave it running, or put it on a screen in a room.
Two modes
- Random makes new pieces on the spot. Every kind of art turns up once before any repeats, and a piece that comes out blank is thrown away before anyone sees it.
- Gallery plays what everyone hearted, in a shuffled order. While the Gallery is small, new pieces are mixed in so the same few do not repeat.
It fits the screen
The screen is split into one to four pieces to suit its shape, and splits again if the device is turned: a phone or small tablet shows one piece; a laptop, desktop display or TV shows two (three on a very wide screen); a tall display shows two stacked. Choose the number yourself with layout below. Each piece is drawn for its own shape, not stretched.
Touch the screen for settings
Move the mouse, tap, or press a key and a small panel appears for a few seconds, then hides again along with the pointer. It switches mode, the number of pieces, how often they change, the names and the drift, pauses, skips to the next piece, goes full screen, and copies a link to the wall with these settings, so you can open the same wall on another screen. On a piece with a flock in it (Flocks, Flocking boids), pressing on the picture attracts the birds toward your finger or pointer.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
Space or P | pause or play |
N or → | next piece |
F | full screen |
C | show or hide the names |
D | drift on or off |
M | switch between random and gallery |
H or Esc | show or hide the panel |
Settings in the address
Everything can be set in the web address, so a TV's browser, a kiosk or a bookmark opens the wall exactly as you want it. Anything not understood is ignored.
| Address part | Does |
|---|---|
?mode=random | new pieces (the default), or mode=gallery for the Gallery |
layout=2 | how many pieces at once: auto (the default), 1, 2, 3 or 4 |
every=60 | seconds between changes, from 5 to 900 (the default is 40) |
captions=off | hide the names (on is the default) |
drift=off | pieces stay as made instead of drifting (also the default for people who asked their device for less motion) |
kind=flock | random mode only: make only this kind of art, using a technique name from the techniques list, or portrait |
quality=low | how sharp the pictures are drawn: high (the default), medium or low, for a slow screen or box (the wall also lowers it by itself when it cannot keep up) |
ui=off | kiosk: no settings panel and nothing below the wall |
For example, /wall/?mode=gallery&layout=1&every=90&captions=off shows one Gallery piece at a time, a new one every minute and a half, with no names. The settings you choose in the panel are remembered in this browser and put into the address.
On a TV or a spare screen
- The wall needs a browser that can draw WebGL 2 (a recent Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari). A computer, a tablet or a stick or mini-PC that runs one of them, connected to the TV, is the dependable way; a TV's own built-in browser may be too limited.
- Open the wall, press F or the Full screen button, and leave it. A browser can only be put full screen by a press or tap, so it cannot do that by itself.
- The wall asks the browser to keep the screen awake where the browser allows it (the panel says whether it worked). Where it does not, set the device's sleep timer to never.
- To avoid marks burning into a screen that stays on for days, the pieces never stop moving, and the small Synapse Drip mark and the names change corner every five minutes. Use the screen's own care settings as well.
- On a computer that runs a kiosk browser, a command like
chromium --kiosk "https://synapsedrip.com/wall/?ui=off"opens it with no panel.