Myriapoda — Generative Motion System in TouchDesigner (POPs 2025 Build)

Music: And We Disappear by Alaskan Tapes

A structure that crawls, curls, and pulses; not alive, but learning the language of movement.

Built in the 2025 experimental build of TouchDesigner, Myriapoda explores the expressive potential of the new POPs operators, a generative system where geometry behaves less like code and more like instinct. Beginning from a single segment, the form expands through recursive POP networks that simulate the chainlike rhythm of Myriapoda, organisms defined by endless, coordinated motion. Paired with And We Disappear by Alaskan Tapes, the piece becomes a meditation on persistence and decay: a mechanical body tracing the pulse of quiet life.

📽 Project Breakdown
• Constructed using the new POPs family in TouchDesigner 2025 (POP Merge, POP Force, POP Spring, and POP SOP integration)
• Particle-driven deformation defines each body segment’s motion, creating fluid, chainlike locomotion
• Noise modulation and local constraints simulate instinctual jitter, subtle course correction, and organic latency
• Feedback and compositing networks generate visual trails that act as temporal afterimages — movement remembering itself
• Rendered to ProRes 422 LT via Movie File Out for cinematic tone and soft bloom

🎧 Recommended Experience
Watch fullscreen, lights low, with headphones. The piece moves with the slow breath of And We Disappear; each segment following a delayed intention, each motion collapsing into stillness.

✨ About the Concept & Inspiration
Myriapoda is a study in digital biology through emergent motion. Using the new POPs system as a creative medium, it explores how particles can act as both matter and memory — a procedural being animated not by keyframes, but by internal logic. The result is a generative lifeform born of computation, echoing the centipede’s patient crawl across time.

💬 Feedback Welcome
If you experiment with TouchDesigner’s new POPs system, generative art, or procedural motion, I’d love to hear your perspective — how do you interpret life within simulation?