FLYPAINTLABA LITTLE BRAIN. AN ENDLESS CANVAS.
01 THE MINDDROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER
LOADING CONNECTOMEDRAG TO ROTATE
NEURAL DRIVE → GUIDED MOTION → INK
02 THE CANVAS
Waking up a little mindLoading anatomy and neural connections…
ORIGINAL 001Preparing the canvasINK / GENERATIVE STUDY
EXPERIMENT NOTES

A fly brain, translated into ink.

This is a browser simulation built around 139,255 fly neurons and 2,698,236 weighted connections from a FlyWire-derived graph. The points above are anatomical neuron positions; their flashes come from the running simulation.

  1. Virtual scent cues stimulate annotated sensory neurons.
  2. A simplified spiking model propagates activity through the connectome.
  3. A designed decoder turns activity into painting speed and pigment pressure. A randomly chosen procedural guide supplies the composition and direction: hearts, flowers, spirals and other studies.
  4. The two front paws sweep across the canvas and lay down soft, overlapping pigment strokes. When the timer ends, the canvas rests. The fly lifts off, the finished sheet slides away and a fresh sheet arrives for a different randomly chosen drawing.

The neural dynamics, sensory cues, drawing guides, motor mapping and leg animation are engineered. Shapes are procedural templates with random variations; the brain model does not invent or choose their subjects. This is generative art, not a demonstration of consciousness, learning or a biologically validated painting behavior. The body is the supplied CT scan by etainproject. It has no skeleton or animation; a small procedural deformation illustrates walking.

Open research, visible credit

Microfly — browser neural engine · FlyBrain — graph preparation · FlyWire — connectome · etainproject — fruit fly CT scan, CC BY 4.0. Display material and animated deformation adapted for this experiment.

Source versions & licenses

Runs on this device. No wallet, sign-in or uploads. Save art downloads a PNG directly to your device.