Hunter Fish

This was stage one of putting together a class of "fish" that would chase and avoid. When a chasing fish tags another fish they both become chasers. At the end the chasers all swim around trying to avoid each other.

Fish Follow

Here I was investigating patterns of grouping and moving. I realized that fairly quickly they form groups that bounce around together; I decided to color the fish based on which direction they were moving to attempt to better observe groups moving together.

Fish Thoughts

Here I began to explore different ways of looking at the same set of rules. The fish have been removed from the visualization, they're still there swimming around but instead an ellipse is drawn whenever they "sense" that another fish is nearby. The size of the ellipse is relative to how close the adjacent fish is. This visualization gives you another sense of the patterns of groupings.

Fish Fabric

I wanted to see if the groups of fish moving together formed travel patterns over a long time. Here I should say that they "bounce" off the top and bottem of the window, but wrap right to left. I made this visualization symmetrical too, just for the fun of it.

Evasion Fish Fabric

This is essentially the same visualization as the previous except here the chasing fish have been reintroduced. When all the non-chasers have been converted to chasers they just bounce around until the window is filled in.

Evasion Fish Fabric 2

I altered the chaser fish's behaviour such that it avoids other chasers. This piece is an attempt to uncover some of their longer term movement patterns. If you let it run for a while a subtle pattern does begin to emerge: the edges darken and a long rectangle in the center.