project
3 posts in project.
Audio visual work on "Rule 30"
An interactive web based audio visual artwork exploring Rule 30.
I recently watched this amazing video about rule 30 showing the beauty of this from Eric Rowland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcGjCcLEgN4 There is a prize for rule 30 https://www.rule30prize.org/ and it makes this more exciting.
After seeing it I wanted to iterate some simulations using audio and visual elements.
Explore the project: https://hasantayyar.net/assets/rule30/
The project uses Web Audio API and there are modes:
- Tapestry: watch and hear the automaton.
- Hidden order: reveal repeating right-edge diagonals.
- One-bit echo: change one cell and compare the resulting futures.
Click Listen to enable sound. Space pauses, 1–3 switch views, M mutes, and F opens fullscreen.
The wave is a visual effect; cell values follow L XOR (C OR R). Finite observations do not prove randomness.
Inspired by Eric Rowland’s research.
A medieval paper computer to possibility engine for
I read about Zā’irja, a medieval “combinatorial text generator” device. I can’t accept most of the claims, but one part was making sense for me: a set of terms/words can produce questions I would not ask on my own.
I vibe coded a small web app from this idea. The following app combines a problem, a way to act, a constraint, a new point of view, and most importantly human goal.
Explore the project: https://hasantayyar.net/assets/possibility-engine/
I was reading “Scrambling T-R-U-T-H Rotating Letters as a Material Form of Thought” by David Link.
I stumbled upon that article while reading about Ramon Llull’s combinatorial machines.
From there jumped to the Zā’irja, another paper device/machine. Historians accept that Llull was heavily and directly inspired by the Ibn Khaldun’s Zā’irja**. Ramon Llull was living in Majorca and learned Arabic. He was exposed to Islamic science, astrology, and mechanics.
Zā’irja is also a paper machine, a paper computational machine, like Llull’s machine. It’s widely analyzed and demystified by Ibn Khaldun. The device originated in the Islamic West (Maghreb / Al-Andalus) around the late 12th century—roughly 200 years before Ibn Khaldun wrote about it. The Zā’irja was many years, like nowadays numerology, used by magic charlatans and misunderstood. Ibn Khaldun completed the first draft of his work/book Muqaddimah (The Introduction) in 1377 CE. And he mentioned about Zā’irja in his work widely. Although it’s mostly very poetic and not to the point. He wrote it while he he was in self-imposed isolation at the castle of Qal’at Ibn Salama, nowadays Algeria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah
Zā’irja operates like an analog computer or a systematic ideation tool designed to generate answers to complex questions.
How It Worked
- Input: You input a clear question written in Arabic.
- Breakdown: The letters of the question are converted into numbers using traditional letter-number systems (Abjad numerology).
- Processing: The data is run through dynamic, concentric circles containing astronomical, cosmological, and mathematical rules.
- Output: The machine rearranges the elements to produce a poetic or insightful answer.
Spatial Kata Notation: writing kata so you can see where you are facing
Karate kata is spatial. You turn, you step, you change facing, and the floor pattern (embusen) is half the work of remembering a form. Most of my notes after class were still paragraphs: technique names in order, with facing lost in the sentence if I remembered to write it down at all.
I wanted something I could read on a phone between sets, paste into a chat, or print without opening an app. That became Spatial Kata Notation (SKN): a plain-text tree for kata and bunkai. The site and generator live in an open repo here:
https://github.com/hasantayyar/spatial-kata-notation
Live docs and the tool: https://hasantayyar.github.io/spatial-kata-notation/
This is an early, working documentation site plus a generator for Karate teachers and students.
If you train, try writing one short section of a kata you know in SKN after class. If the facing line feels redundant, good: that means you already had it clear. If you keep correcting the facing line, the notation is doing its job.
A single move looks like this:
+-- [STEP → N] -------------- (Face: N)
| ├─ Stance : [R] Z-D
| ├─ Action : Right Age-uke (J)
| └─ Key : Rise under attack angle
Multi-beat transitions nest under one move:
+-- [MAWATTE → E] ----------- (Face: E)
| ├─ Beat 1 : [R] Z-D
| │ └─ Action : Right Gedan-barai (G)
| ├─ Beat 2 : Pull back into [R] N-D
| │ └─ Action : Right Tetsui Otoshi-uchi / Otoshi-uke (C)
| └─ Note : Distinct two-part transition
It is not a grading tool, a style authority, or a substitute for partner work in the dojo. Every sheet should name the school reading it follows (for example Shito-Ryu, or dojo-specific).
That sounds obvious. It is also the part most “systems” forget once they get a logo.
The kihon catalog is a practical vocabulary list with belt floors, not an official federation syllabus. Dojos differ. Again: sensei first.
Under the hood the useful bits are small TypeScript modules: an SKN parser for kata spines, a practice-plan generator, and the kihon catalog. No account system, no timer coach, no backend. Plain text in, plain text plan out, copy button.