Contention

01 One buffer, no referee

Six processes were written to share one pixel buffer, and then nothing was written to make them get along. Each holds ground with a strength value that decays every frame, so territory is never owned, only recently taken. A system can claim a pixel only by pushing harder than whoever is holding it at that moment. Nothing blends. Every pixel has exactly one owner.

02 The wash, and the one line that fixed it

The first version was a wash. Whichever system spread evenly across the whole field swamped the ones with a local footprint, and within seconds the screen settled into a single colour with a bit of texture in it. The fix was a cap: no system may hold much more than an equal share. One line turned a winner into a standoff, which is what the piece is actually about.

03 Six kinds of process

The six are different kinds of process, not just different colours. A flow field, a growth that crawls outward from where it already is, a grid, rows being set like lines of type, a wave, and a scatter. Behaviour you can tell apart is the only thing keeping this chaotic rather than noisy. On a phone four of them run, chosen rather than simply the first four.

04 The only power you have

Whichever system holds the ground where your stroke starts becomes the current contender, and drawing hands it that ground outright. The stroke is not yours to keep either. It reads the ground it has not reached yet, and whoever holds enough of what the line is moving into takes it over mid-gesture, so one unbroken drag comes out in bands rather than a single colour. It is the only power you have, and it is not a lasting one: the line stands for as long as you keep drawing, and once you lift it is on loan for a couple of seconds more before the others take the ground back.