A screen-print press prints the squiggle of hash 0x2fe8a246 onto a heather grey hoodie in its own colours, the squeegee pulling one stretch of its colour wheel per pass.
The squiggle of hash 0x2e1724a1 chases four echoes of its own future frames through a figure eight, setting off right, without stopping, each two frames ahead of the one before and a soft shadow in its own colours, each slower than the one in front; they get back to where it began first and wait, and the moment it lands they go out of it again to where it is going next.
The squiggle of hash 0x9323e4ee is laid out as a fuse in a clearing in a pine forest, a kid in goggles and a dog filming it with a camcorder from behind the fence, and a spark races along it to a rubber duck that sputters and fizzles out; they pop up shouting "GM!" and nothing happens at all — a dud, and the bubble says "RUG?"
A yellowed dot-matrix printer holds up the squiggle it has printed on white fan-fold paper; the sheet is torn off at the perforation and a fresh sheet feeds up; then the head sweeps back and forth, printing the squiggle again band by band in the colours of hash 0x65c51027.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0x49969810 lies dim until a white comet runs its length, trailing a streak of rainbow behind it.
A copper-wound electromagnet slides under a dish of black ferrofluid in front of a chalkboard, and it rises into the tall-spiked squiggle with a sheen in the colours of hash 0xf41c5cc4; the magnet slides away, and the squiggle leans after it and collapses into a blob.
A raccoon on a city street by day holds up a cardboard sign with the squiggle of hash 0x5cfd1e9c drawn on it in red marker, and hoists it overhead as the traffic goes by. A passer-by stops and snaps it, flash and all.
The squiggle of hash 0x6ff60a81 is the picture on a 24-piece round-tabbed jigsaw, on a black ground, lying on a green felt table; it's tipped out into a jumble and built back piece by piece, corners and edges first, until the last piece snaps in with a burst of sparkles.
A cherry-handled rubber stamp dabs twice on a pad striped in the colours of hash 0xce248813 in a slate tin, slams down on a sheet of cream paper and lifts to leave its squiggle printed there; then the sheet slides away and a fresh one waits, under a wooden rail where two small proofs of it hang up to dry.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0x52bbf367 is cast as a tube of polished silver chrome, while a glint sweeps its length with a sparkle at its head.
A rapeseed field at night beside a farmhouse: a silver flying saucer with green lights hovers, and its beam sweeps in a zigzag down the rapeseed; then it shoots straight up through the stars. At dawn, seen from above, the squiggle of hash 0x704932c8 lies carved into the rapeseed; the farmer in a cowboy hat walks in and scratches their head, and the rapeseed springs back up.
A hand with porcelain skin holds a phone in a white case with a cracked screen, the X app in Dim mode. The thumb flicks the feed past post after post to CHROMIE's verified post of the squiggle of hash 0xe397f43b, a hit, the hand slides up the phone, and the thumb taps the image: it opens full screen. Then it closes, the hand slides down to swipe home, the app shrinks to its icon over a wallpaper striped in its colours with every place packed with apps and badges, and the thumb taps X to open it again.
In a bay of the shop's shelf, lit cyan, the cleaner in a white hard hat walks along the belt to the acrylic stand that shows the squiggle of hash 0x6cf1e71d, breathes on it, polishes the fog off with a yellow duster, steps back as a glint runs across the pane, and taps the pane to show it off, leaves a fingerprint, and rubs that off too.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0xaa8240ea is drawn after the early prototype squiggles — longer, with more strokes — in three of its own colours, far apart on the wheel, that drift along it dark to bright.
Fireworks over a desert of mesas and saguaros in the blue hour: a rocket goes up and bursts into the squiggle of hash 0xf27d4bd8 in its own colours, a little broken, which hangs, droops, every spark strobing as it dies out until the next one goes up.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0x5fecd648 sits over its genome, a tape of its control-point bytes lit in amber phosphor; one point at a time a single bit flips and its point leaps, burnt by a beam of UV and springs back, so the mutation travels down the squiggle from end to end.
Game night on a starry night. From the air, the squiggle of hash 0xdb2a834c is the logo at midfield in its own colours, between CHROMIE and SQUIGGLE in the purple endzones, both teams lined up in the red zone. The camera tilts up to the jumbotron: the mascot fires a T-shirt printed with the squiggle into the stand, and the big screen shows the fan who caught it holding it up. A beach ball bounces along over the heads of the stand. Then it tilts back down to the field as the huddle breaks and the players walk back to the line.
A rainbow-striped sketch toy's knobs turn and draw the squiggle of hash 0xfa8cbea5 in one grey line; the toy is shaken hard, and the line's own colours fall to the bottom of the screen like sand, until a curtain of powder sweeps it away.
In a bay at the end of the shop's shelf, lit pink, the belt operator in an orange hard hat steps up to the lever and hauls it down; the lights blink yellow and go green, and the acrylic stand that shows the squiggle of hash 0x88324bca rides off the far end of the belt and back in at the lever's end. Hands on hips, they watch it run, throw the lever back up as it comes home, and nod.
On a deep ground in its own colour, fine rings ripple out in bursts of three from the squiggle of hash 0x86721774 like sonar, each ring the next hue on the wheel, while its own colours flow along it, and the rings run on to the edge of the canvas, thinning to a shimmer.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0xe2356668 is seen as if in water, striped and rippling while the hue wheel turns through it.
The squiggle of hash 0xbe278cfb is drawn across the top of a white sketchpad page, and a black pen carries on from its end, down to a point and back up, to make it the top of a heart, stippled in the squiggle's own colours. Then the page is turned and it is drawn again.
A camera on a tripod in Bulb mode takes a 30-second exposure of a pine forest full of fireflies: a painter in dark clothes walks through the dark with an LED wand and draws the squiggle of hash 0x7340ca62 in the air, in the squiggle's own colours, though only the light itself shows as it moves. The shutter closes, the camera processes, and the photo pops up on its screen with the whole squiggle glowing in the night.
A masked writer sprays the squiggle of hash 0x18bb95c3 onto a timber fence in its own colours, outlines it and walks off, then the rain washes it down into a puddle.
The squiggle of hash 0xa5058238 is a fishing lure with treble hooks, and a crappie hangs from it over a lake at night; the catch drops back in, two hands tie the lure on again, it's cast from the bank, the float bobs and goes under, and up it comes with a crappie on the hook.
In a brick smithy, a blacksmith in a welding helmet (deep skin) forges the squiggle of hash 0x7f55b197 from five bars of steel: they heat in the coals as the smith pumps the bellows, are carried to a black anvil as the camera pans after them, and are fire-welded together a joint at a time, flux, a hammer blow and a shower of sparks at each, before the piece is quenched in the trough in a burst of steam, and comes out whole in its own colours.
The squiggle of hash 0x5e0583d6 fills the LED wall, rings rippling out from it, behind a DJ in a cap on a controller, in a black booth under cyan lights, playing to a busy floor. The right deck slips and the wall shows the squiggle doubled, two copies flamming past each other, until three nudges of the jog wheel pull them back into one; the crowd crouches, and the drop hits with a strobe, hands up and pyro.
The squiggle of hash 0xa62725ed stands as a sculpture under a spotlight on a wood pedestal in a white gallery hung with portraits; a visitor walks in carrying a phone, raises it and takes the sculpture's picture in a burst of flash, and walks on.
An old navy-and-silver browser window shows the squiggle of hash 0x0e932d73 on a grey page above an under-construction stripe; a cursor glides in right-clicks it and chooses SAVE IMAGE AS..., saves it as SQUIGGLE.GIF, and the save stalls halfway, the window stops responding under an hourglass, then it comes back and finishes until it reads SAVED, then glides away.
The squiggle of hash 0x9fb2dca0, drawn into a sketchbook of stick figures (flying a kite, juggling and running) with a little sketch of the squiggle in the corner: a stick figure with a mustache winds a crank, and the squiggle's near-black rim lifts off its colour fill, sliding apart on a diagonal with dashed leader lines; then the figure works it back and it snaps back together.
The squiggle of hash 0x30b71b48 on a common trading card, a shield jersey patch stitched into the card below the art.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0xc33350c6 lies flat as a heart monitor's trace, and with every beat a pulse travels along it, its true shape rising and glowing in a colour of its own, while a red heart flashes beside a healthy resting pulse that rises and falls with the breath.
A green yoyo wears the squiggle of hash 0x96fc7639 on its white cap; it is pulled up its lime string and thrown, sleeps at the bottom spinning, its logo smeared into rings of its own colours, and slows to a stop with the squiggle upright.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0xa4a3b3de glows in lemon yellow, lit all over with a soft glow round it: the light dims, and it swells back.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0x05f1e136 is an empty glass that fills with a colour of its own and drains again, the level crossing its wiggles as it rises.
The squiggle of hash 0x80d6679c floats on a deep teal ground and is pixel-sorted by hue: its rows tear sideways and its columns drip, alternate lines flung opposite ways to the edge of the frame in streaks, every line on a cycle of its own, then it gathers back whole, in a seamless loop.
A log cabin burns at dusk in summer, flames roaring off its roof while the neighbours watch. From the air, a crew of 6 hold a hose from their red engine across the yard, and the hose is the squiggle of hash 0xbcae4819: it lies flat and grey until the water runs along it in its draw order and it swells into its own colours, then the nozzle opens and the fire goes out. Back on the street the smoke pours off the charred roof and spreads across the sky.
A stealth flying wing writes the squiggle of hash 0x170e6620 across a blue sky in white smoke. The smoke billows, drifts with the wind and breaks up, while clouds sail by.
Paint by numbers: the squiggle of hash 0x8bc1bcf4 printed as a paint-by-numbers kit on a white canvas board, its body cut into numbered regions, one a stretch of each of its colours, with five numbered pots of its own hues below. A painter's gloved hand dips a brush in pot 1 and paints every 1, then every 2, on to 5, until the board is the finished squiggle in its own base and goes; on the way out its sleeve knocks pot 5 over and the paint runs out across the kit; a black frame drops over it, and a fresh kit slides in.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0x5ce7b43b writes itself stroke by stroke in the order it was drawn, holds complete, then erases from where it began.
A squiggle drawn from hash 0x8666c704 flattens into a line and turns itself upside down, its peaks and troughs pulling into one colour as it passes through flat.
A blue slot machine in a casino spins reels of squiggles for hash 0x1b78996f and lands a pair, dropping a few coins into its tray; its screen reads PAIR, and the jackpot meter over the reels creeps up.
The squiggle of hash 0xd4b7bc62 is the icing: a heart-shaped two-layer cake in lemon frosting on a gold cake board on a lace tablecloth, the squiggle piped across the top in its own colours, sugar flowers, with 3 candles, the candles are blown out, and a black lab comes up over the edge of the table and takes a bite out of it.
At a party at sunset, the squiggle lies on the lawn among lollipops under a donkey piñata, frilled in the colours of hash 0x3fe42c2d, torn open on its rope; then a fresh one swings from a wooden beam hung with bunting, two friends circle it cheering, and a blindfolded kid with a bat misses twice, then connects, and it bursts: the squiggle tumbles out with lollipops and bounces on the grass.

Ribbed Repairman #02 by Stephen Santoro

Ribbed Repairman #02

The shop's big screen, its edge lit violet, shows the squiggle of hash 0x57a8ba12, then switches itself off, the picture squeezing down to a line and a dot; through a trap door in it the screens' repairman in a violet hard hat comes up a ladder to the waist, steadies the dangling black plug and shoves it home, the socket's lamp comes up green, and the picture opens back out; they watch it a moment, nod, and pull the door shut over themselves.

1/100

  • #art
  • #squiggle
  • #repairman
  • #generative
  • #pixel
  • #ribbed
  • #black plug
  • #violet glow
  • #unplugged
  • #worker