Chromatic Infestation is a visualization of itself. It continually scans its own source code: words beginning with R are drawn as red circles, G with green, and B with blue -- like bacterial cultures across a white plane. The size of each circle is determined by how often the word appears in code. Meanwhile, the program progressively injects new lines of code into itself, to increase the circles, until the circles begin to mix and interact in washes of color. As new code is inserted, the changes appear in the black column to the left. The injected code grows, like a tumor, bogging the program down, while introducing new behaviors. This new code calls functions used to draw the circles and labeling (the visualization itself), creating scattered new glitches based on these behaviors. When it gets to 10,000 lines, it is usually completely covered in color -- at this point, it resets back to its initial condition.

Chromatic Infestation is written in Zajal and runs on the Mac. It takes 45 min to 2 hours to run, and is different each time.

Minute-long excerpts of the program running:

Beginning of the program

 

 

 

Approx 20 minutes into the program

 

 

 

Approx an hour into the program