intermomentary(6x)

okay so bestie, welcome to intermomentary(6x), fresh from the XScreenSaver manual. it’s a circle-intersection visualizer and it’s giving museum-installation main character energy. 🎀✨

✨ NAME ✨

intermomentary — Visualize the momentary and aggregate intersections between slowly moving circles. 🦋

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

intermomentary [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual]
[--window] [--root] [--window-id number] [--foreground color]
[--background color] [--num-discs disc count] [--draw-delay delayms]
[--max-riders maxr] [--max-radius maxradius] [--fps]

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

The Intersection Momentary is a fun visualization defining the relationships between objects with Casey Reas, William Ngan, and Robert Hodgin. Commissioned for display at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 🖼️✨

A surface filled with 100 medium to small sized circles. Each circle has a different size and direction, but moves at the same slow rate. Display:

• A. The instantaneous intersections of the circles.
• B. The aggregate intersections of the circles.

The circles begin with a radius of 1 pixel and slowly increase to some arbitrary size. Circles are drawn with small moving points along the perimeter. The intersections are rendered as glowing orbs. Glowing orbs are rendered only when a perimeter point moves past the intersection point. 🫧🔥

💅 OPTIONS 💅

intermomentary accepts the following options, bestie:

• --num-discs disc count — Number of slowly moving and growing discs to use. The more discs, the more CPU power. (Default: 85)
• --draw-delay delayms — Delay in ms between drawing cycles. More delay, slower (but smoother and less CPU intensive.) art. (Default: 30000)
• --max-riders maxrider — Maximum number of 'riders', single dots moving around the edge of the discs. (Default: 40)
• --max-radius maxradius — Maximum possible radius of a disc. (Default: 100)
• --fps — Display the current frame rate and CPU load.
• --visual visual — Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.
• --window — Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.
• --root — Draw on the root window.
• --window-id number — Draw on the specified window.

also, the synopsis name-drops these three, so here they are without extra invented lore:

• --display host:display.screen — no separate blurb in the original OPTIONS list.
• --foreground color — no separate blurb in the original OPTIONS list.
• --background color — no separate blurb in the original OPTIONS list.

💀 BUGS 💀

Setting the background to anything besides black confuses the intensity algorithm and will look terrible. fr fr, it’s not a cute look. 😭

🍓 ENVIRONMENT 🍓

• DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number.
• XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
• XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — The window ID to use with --root.

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• X(1)
• xscreensaver(1)

🎀 COPYRIGHT 🎀

Copyright © 2003 by J. Tarbell <complex@complexification.net>. XScreenSaver port: Mike Kershaw <dragorn@kismetwireless.net>

🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

J. Tarbell <complex@complexification.net>, Jun 2003. Mike Kershaw <dragorn@kismetwireless.net>, Oct 2004.

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and that’s the whole vibe, bestie. this page comes from X Version 11, version 6.09 (07-Jun-2024) — go make some glowing orb intersections and slay. 💖✨