An interactive archive of invisible forces and their visible traces.
Every movement leaves a trace,
then fades.
Explore by Shape
Different forces. Familiar forms.
Tree Rings
Each year a tree adds one new layer of wood. Fast spring growth is pale, slow late-summer growth is dark, so every year leaves a ring.
Coffee Stain
Spilled coffee spreads until its edge sticks to the paper. As it dries, liquid flows outward to replace what evaporates at the rim, carrying coffee grains with it, so the edge ends up darker than the middle.
Crater
A meteorite hits at tens of kilometres per second. The shock wave pushes rock outward in every direction at once, so even when it arrives at an angle, the hole it leaves is round.
Lyme Rash
Bacteria from a tick bite travel outward through the skin. The body’s immune response follows behind them, so a red ring keeps widening, often around a paler centre.
Raindrop Ripple
When a raindrop hits water, energy spreads outward from the point of impact, producing circular waves that gradually fade.
Pencil Shaving
Turning a pencil against a fixed blade peels off a thin ribbon. Because the tip is a cone, the outer edge of the ribbon is longer than the inner edge, so the shaving curls into a frilled circle.
Ammonite Fossil
As an ammonite grew, it added larger and larger chambers, winding its shell into a spiral. Millions of years later, minerals replaced the shell and kept its shape in stone.
Fingerprint Whorl
Before birth, the layers of skin on a fingertip grow at different speeds and buckle into ridges. Where the fingertip pad is round and high, the ridges wrap into circles.
Pottery Wheel Marks
The wheel turns while the potter’s fingers press into the clay. Every turn leaves a ring, so the pot keeps a record of the hands that pulled it up.
River Delta
Where a river meets the sea, it slows down and drops the sand it carries. The sand blocks its path, so the water splits around it again and again into a fan of channels.
Leaf Veins
A leaf needs water in every cell. Its veins branch from one midrib into smaller and smaller paths, so no part of the leaf is far from a supply line.
Frost
On a cold window, water vapour freezes straight into ice. Each crystal grows fastest at its tips, where it meets the most vapour, so the tips keep splitting into feathery branches.
Tree Roots
Roots grow down toward water and out toward nutrients. Each time a tip finds a richer patch of soil it branches there, so the roots end up mapping where the water was.
Cracked Glass
When something hits a sheet of glass, the stress has nowhere to go. Cracks shoot out from the point of impact faster than sound, then forks and rings join them, so the glass keeps a map of exactly where it was struck.