Make live-coded visuals

Ask for visuals the way you would describe them to a friend. For example: “A live coding visuals page where I type Hydra sketches, see them full screen, and keep the ones I like.” Or: “A video synth with knobs for mirror, warp and trails that can use my camera.” Or: “VJ visuals for my set that move with the music in the room.”

Every one of these apps runs on Hydra, the video synth the live-coding community plays at algoraves. A Hydra sketch is a short chain of functions, so a whole moving picture fits on one line:

jsosc(8, 0.1, 1.2).kaleid(5).rotate(() => time * 0.1).out()

Type one and it plays at once, on your graphics card. A sketch with a typo shows a short note beside the editor while the last good picture keeps going, so you can play with it live. Sketches you keep are tiny text documents, so a gallery of them loads in a blink and anyone can remix one.

Knobs, your camera, and the room

Not everyone wants to type. A video synth turns each knob into a number in the sketch, and shows you the sketch the knobs wrote, so you can learn the language by watching it change. “Use my camera” puts you in the picture, through kaleidoscopes and feedback trails. “Listen to the room” makes the picture breathe with whatever is playing, with no setup.

Visuals that follow your Strudel beat

If you already make music with Strudel, ask for “a Strudel pattern that drives a Hydra sketch”. Every kick, snare and hat the pattern plays reaches the sketch as a number it can use, so the picture lands on the beat. Keep the pattern and the sketch together as a set, and share the set with your crew.

Try the worked examples: a sketch pad, a video synth and beat visuals.

For developers, the Hydra reference has the engine recipe, the text-to-sketch prompt for callAI, and all three examples.