🌈 neural art go brrr

A tiny C script that generates cool neural net random art.

what is this?

it’s a CPPN (Compositional Pattern Producing Network)(Apparently, I don't actually know if this is true, I am too lazy to check, I generated readme using gemini), it basically does this for every single pixel:

1. "yo math, here is a coordinate (x, y) and the current time." <- AAHHAHAHAH, shoutout gemini
2. the neural net does some random math $(\tanh, \sin, \text{etc.})$
3. it spits out an RGB value.
4. we paint the pixel.

since neural nets are basically just big continuous functions, the output looks like organic trippy soup instead of random noise.

Demos

If you don't want to compile this right now, check out the demos/ folder. It has a few recordings of what this thing actually spits out.

how to run

1. check if you have gcc and ffmpeg.
2. Make sure you have a video player like mpv or vlc installed, otherwise the script will finish but nothing will pop up.
3. run the magic script:

   chmod +x run.sh
   ./run.sh

inspiration

I don't really have much to say to be honest, so here are random videos that made me think of this:

• coding a machine learning library in c from scratch by Magicalbat.
• Implementing Scientific Paper in C by Tsoding Daily.