Shader Playground Playground Classroom
PingPong

Feedback
Smear

A page of demos built on the same trick — render into a texture, read that texture next frame, blend the two. The ping-pong between two framebuffers turns every frame into a letter to the next one, and the decay parameter decides how long those letters are remembered.

The same two-pass pipeline sits under every demo here: a fresh render goes into one framebuffer, a blend pass mixes it with the previous frame's buffer, and the result is the next frame's "previous." Different source material — a moving stamp, a video kaleidoscope, a Whitney piece — reveals different aesthetics of the same machinery.

  1. 01

    Lissajous

    A single soft pen traces a Lissajous curve through aspect-corrected space, leaving an additive trail that cycles hue over time. The cleanest read of the technique — one stamp, one decay, one buffer pair.

    Available
  2. 02

    Kaleidoscope

    The Classic kaleidoscope effect with frame-feedback smear layered on top. Drop an image or video, then watch the folded reflections drag their history behind them as the rotation continues. Blend mode: mix(fresh, prev, decay).

    Available
  3. 03

    Whitney

    All ten Whitney pieces routed through the feedback loop — the analog optical-printer aesthetic that Whitney himself built physically, reconstructed digitally. Blend mode: max(fresh, prev * decay) so bright lines stay bright.

    Available
  4. 04

    Droste

    Escher's Print Gallery as a feedback loop. Each frame samples the previous frame at zα, the De Smit–Lenstra complex power map — one full rotation around the center = a zoom by factor r. Feedback manufactures the mise-en-abyme that Escher painted by hand.

    Available

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