fun fun fun auf der
FINGERBAHN
applet by golan levin
10 november 1998
[pictures]

the fingerbahn is a visualization of all the little buggies who spend their lives on our hide. the buggies who live on my hide are round and friendly. you can position them on my fingers; they'll move along the grooves of my fingerprints.

there's a main 'hand' screen which is the point of departure; choose a finger by clicking on its tip or by hitting ENTER. once you're at the finger, you can click to deposit a buggie. typing SPACE will put down a bunch of buggies; the PLUS and MINUS keys change the size of the buggies. to get back to the hand screen you can type ENTER again or click in the black area of the screen.

to make the fingerbahn i computed a flow field from each fingerprint; the buggies then move along this flow field. i rubbed my fingers on graphite first in order to make it a little easier for my edge detection code to determine how my prints were oriented.

presumably the buggies are going around eating other buggies that are too small for us to see.