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Print & screen effect

Cyclic Automaton

Cyclic Automaton is a halftone and retro screen effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Every cell waits for a neighbour one step ahead of it and then follows. Out of that one rule the frame grinds itself down into great cycling domains with waves rippling out through them.

Runs live on video, images, a camera or generated art. Stack it with any other effect, and route LFOs, envelopes or any of ten audio bands to its controls so it moves with the music.

Try Cyclic Automaton free All effects

The untouched demo art: an eye inside a triangle over wavy teal, blue and peach lines — Source

The eye-in-triangle art under a blocky mosaic of peach, red, violet and yellow cells, the triangle faintly visible — Cyclic Automaton, default settings

What Cyclic Automaton does

Covers the whole frame in coloured cells, each stepping to the next colour in a cycle once enough neighbours are already there. It opens as big blocks that follow the picture's brightness, then wavefronts sweep through and grind them into cycling domains and spirals, with a bright edge on every front. States sets the cycle length, Threshold how many neighbours it takes, and Seed how many spirals form.

Using Cyclic Automaton

Where it works: Full-frame backdrops for a long build or an ambient set, where the picture dissolving into spirals is the event. Unlike Life Bloom and Brian's Brain it replaces the frame, so it works as a transition out of a still.
With the music: It advances by generation on the clock, twelve a second at centre Speed. Route B1 kick to Seed so defects land on the beat and fresh spirals nucleate there, and a slow LFO on Spread widens the palette over a phrase.
Starting point: Scale at a quarter, States at three-quarters, Threshold hard left, Seed at centre, Spread at centre, then give it ten seconds to form spirals.

Controls

Scale: Size of one cell. Smaller cells make finer, more numerous spirals.
States: How many steps there are in the cycle. Few states churn and resolve fast; many states hold the noise phase longer and settle into larger, cleaner domains.
Threshold: How many neighbours must already be one step ahead before a cell follows. One lets wavefronts sweep freely, which is what grinds the opening noise down into the domains a spiral can wind out of; higher holds out and breaks the board into shards.
Seed: How hard the picture is written into the board, and how many defects are scattered in as it runs. A spiral winds itself around a defect, so this is the spiral count as much as it is the noise floor.
Tint: Where the cycle starts on the colour wheel.
Spread: How far round the wheel a full cycle travels. Narrow keeps the spirals to one colour family; wide runs them through the whole spectrum.
Blend: Weight of the automaton over the picture underneath.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Cyclic Automaton