Byte Drift is a canvas specimen in this vitrine: a field of digits reading a horizon that will not hold still, parting for the pointer and collapsing at a click. It exposes 24 parameters, runs continuously, and was added on 17 September 2026.
| Kind | Canvas |
|---|---|
| Lifecycle | ambient |
| Motion | continuous:drift+pointer |
| Stage role | subject |
| Themes | light · dark |
| Parameters | 24 |
| Added | 2026-09-17 |
Each of the 24 parameters below is a real control in the panel. The reasoning is first-hand: where a bound comes from a measured property of the work, that measurement is named.
default
Empty by default — the field is meant to read as one uninterrupted surface, the way the reference does. Type here and the avoidance machinery ported from that site comes back into play: the field parts around this line, and the rectangle it parts around is measured from the type rather than declared, so the hole follows whatever you write.
colour, default #e9e9ee (dark) / #16161a (light)
Only ever visible when text is set, which it is not by default. It colours the work's own line of type and nothing else — the field keeps the two teals it inherited. Ours. It colours the wordmark only — the field keeps its own two teals, which are read from the source and not open to a theme. Split per theme because one ink cannot sit on both grounds.
6–24 px, default 10.5
Read from the source, where one number is both the glyph size and the unit the whole grid is measured in. Raising it makes the field coarser and cheaper in the same move; there is no way to get big glyphs on a fine grid, and that coupling is the reference's, not an oversight here.
0.4–1.4 ×, default 0.62
Read from the source. Below about 0.6 the digits begin to touch at the default size and the readout turns into a smear; the reference sits just above that edge, which is why the band reads as numerals rather than texture.
0.8–2.4 ×, default 1.32
Read from the source, and deliberately looser than the column pitch: rows carry the horizon, and leaving air between them is what lets a one-cell change in height read as a step rather than a jag.
0–0.6, default 0.14
Read from the source. Where the horizon sits at the far left, before the rise carries it up. It is low because the whole figure is meant to climb from left to right — a reading that is going somewhere, not a level line.
0–1, default 0.66
Read from the source. The horizon climbs by this much across the frame. At zero the work becomes a flat band and the digits stop meaning anything — they would all read the same number.
-0.4–0, default -0.1
Read from the source: a narrow gaussian notch near the left edge. It is the one feature of the horizon that never moves, so it reads as a place rather than as weather.
0–0.2, default 0.04
Read from the source — the largest of three travelling waves stacked on the horizon. The three have incommensurate frequencies, so the figure never repeats; this one supplies most of what the eye reads as motion.
-2–2, default -0.5
Read from the source, and negative — this wave runs right to left while the second runs the other way. Two opposed drifts is what keeps the horizon from looking like a single scrolling texture.
2–20, default 10.5
Read from the source. The horizon height is multiplied by this and rounded, and the result is the digit that gets drawn — so this is the resolution of the readout. ⚠️ It happens to equal the type size numerically and has nothing to do with it; merging the two would bite on the day either needs to move.
0–4, default 1.3
Read from the source. Without it neighbouring cells on the same contour show identical digits and the band turns into visible stripes of one numeral. The jitter is large enough to break the stripe and small enough that the number still tracks the height.
0–30 Hz, default 8
Read from the source. How often a cell redraws its jitter — stepped, not continuous, so digits snap to new values instead of sliding. At zero the field freezes into a still readout, which is worth seeing once.
0.02–0.6, default 0.16
Read from the source. Brightness above it means the cell is on the signal and shows a digit; below it the cell falls back to the sparse glyphs. It is the single line between "readout" and "static", and moving it visibly widens or starves the band.
1–32, default 8
Read from the source. Columns drop out of the sparse field in groups of this width rather than one at a time, which is what gives the quiet region its vertical banding — a transmission with gaps, not even static. At 1 the structure disappears into noise.
0–0.8, default 0.16
Read from the source. The floor of how often a sparse cell simply stays empty; it rises towards the top of the frame, so the field thins out as it climbs away from the horizon.
0–0.5, default 0.11
Read from the source, and low enough to land in the dimmest of the three alpha tiers — which is why the quiet region reads as one flat wash while the band has structure inside it. Raising it past the mid threshold makes the whole frame equally loud.
0–500 px, default 170
Read from the source. It is scaled by a hover envelope that eases in over a tenth of a second, so the field parts as the pointer arrives rather than snapping. At zero the pointer is inert and the work becomes something only to look at.
0–30, default 9
Read from the source, and counted in whole grid cells — the field bends while staying on its grid, which is why it never blurs. Cells pushed onto the same target keep the brighter one, so the band survives being shoved.
0.01–1 s, default 0.12
Read from the source. The time constant of the hover envelope, and also what decides when the work leaves its slow idle beat for full frame rate — so it is a feel control and a cost control at the same time.
200–8000, default 2600
Read from the source. Click the field and every glyph falls under it. High enough that the collapse reads as a drop rather than a drift, and the whole field is down inside the timeout.
0.3–1.5 ×, default 0.72
Read from the source, in row heights. Below 1 the landed glyphs overlap slightly, which is what makes the heap read as a mass rather than a stack of shelves.
0–3 s, default 0.5
Read from the source. How long the heap sits before lifting. Short enough that it reads as one gesture rather than two, long enough that the pile is legible as a thing that happened.
0.1–3 s, default 0.8
Read from the source. Each glyph takes this long to return, but they start in left-to-right order, so the field reassembles as a sweep. Slower than the fall on purpose: gravity is indifferent, coming back is not.
A verbatim port: the integer hash, the moving skyline, the digit-as-height readout, the two glyph sets, the three alpha tiers, the two teals, the pointer displacement in whole cells, and the collapse-hold-reform sequence were all read out of that site's production bundle. What is avoided is not inherited — that site carves around four elements of its own page, this work carves around type it draws itself.
Replaces the reference's Geist Mono, which is not ours to ship. The cabinet already carries this face for No.001 and No.005; a monospaced face is not decoration here — the field is a grid, and a glyph that does not fit its cell breaks the grid rather than the type.
Open the panel to change any parameter above and watch it apply immediately. From there the work leaves as a link, as source, as a PNG, or as a video.