The Scroll Art Museum - Artwork

Percolate

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:59 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Liquid seeps downward through porous rock.

Depending on the density of the rock text characters, the liquid text characters may fill the entire area or quickly end up blocked entirely. Open the Customize section and experiment with the "porosity" setting: 0.0 means no blocking rocks while …

Maze Gen

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:58 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. An infinite perfect maze is carved one row at a time.

This piece uses Eller's algorithm to generate the infinite maze that ensures that every region continues into the next row.

Redact

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:57 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. A classified report scrolls past with random words hidden beneath solid bars.

Brownian

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:56 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Large and small particles jitter through space, reminiscent of Brownian motion, and leave fleeting tracks behind them.

Hourglass

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:55 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Sand drains through a narrow hourglass and accumulates in the chamber below. The series of hourglasses themselves create a larger pattern.

Rope

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:50 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Oscillating strands cross over and under one another to form an endlessly scrolling rope. Similar to the Proton Stream piece.

Each strand follows a sinusoidal path with its own phase and drawing character. The woven braid appearance comes from changing the layer order of the strands.

Guilloche

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:40 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Overlapping spirograph curves form an intricate scrolling guilloche engraving.

Earthquake

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:30 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Layered terrain shudders through sudden earthquakes and gradually fading aftershocks. This piece experiments with irregular line production timings to create the sudden-quake effect.

Suspense

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:20 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. A tightening field of symbols compresses towards the center to build tension before bursting outward in a rapid release.

Tides

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:10 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Rolling ASCII waves advance and recede across a beach under a slower tidal rhythm.

Sandstorm

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 23:59:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Windblown grains of ASCII sand sweep across the terminal in overlapping, shifting gusts.

DNA

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. A repeating double helix twists down the terminal with paired DNA bases between its strands.

Carefully indented rows make the two sides of the helix appear to cross, separate, and reconnect. Letters representing adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine form the base pairs within the scrolling structure. Based …

Password Cracker

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. A simulated password-cracking display gradually resolves random characters into a hidden message.

Every column begins as a stream of changing letters and numbers. At random intervals, one column locks into place and reveals the corresponding character from the message until the complete phrase emerges.

Playing Cards

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Random ASCII art playing cards.

Inspired by the structure of Ducklings, this piece assembles four-line card drawings.

Scroll Lightning

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Branching bolts of ASCII lightning flash across an endlessly scrolling sky.

New bolts appear at random positions, zigzag toward the edges, and occasionally fork into separate paths. Their short lifespans keep the pattern in constant motion while the overlapping strokes build brief electrical storms.

Tsuro Scroll

Al Sweigart — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2026. Randomly selected and rotated tiles form a continuously scrolling network of convoluted routes.

Each five-by-five tile contains several paths made from box-drawing characters. The program chooses tiles and orientations independently, but their edge connections let neighboring pieces join into a larger maze-like design. Inspired by the tiles …

Bund FC

Al Sweigart — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Al Sweigart, 2026. Inspired by the kinetic architecture of the Bund Finance Center in Shanghai.

The BFC has three, overlapping, moving layers of vertical stainless steel pipes. These layers, inspired by theatre curtains, slowly rotate around the building.

Candlelight

Al Sweigart — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Al Sweigart, 2026. Flickering columns with random expansions and contractions.

Candlelight was the result of Al Sweigart trying to create expanding and contracting columns that also shifted horizontally. He thought the end result had a flickering candle appearance.

Pipe Swap

Al Sweigart — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2025. Vertical pipes that criss cross and swap places.

"Pipe Swap" was a quick work made during a lunchtime creative computing workshop at the Recurse Center. He wanted vertical lines that would randomly swap to a different column.

Towers and Towers

Al Sweigart — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Growing towers sprouting from the bottom of the screen.

Towers and Towers was created for the Forbidden Zone music video. Al Sweigart wanted a piece with a start-and-stop feel, like a time-lapse of mushrooms erupting out of the ground.

Any Size Diagonal Maze

Al Sweigart — Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Random. A variation of Diagonal Maze.

While a random collection of the two diagonal characters forms the "maze", larger mazes can be created with 2 x 2, 3 x 3, or any arbitrary N x N size. This piece cycles through mazes of various size.

Forth and Back

Al Sweigart — Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A stripe knocking side to side, back and forth, against an increasing chaotic background.

This piece was creating for the opening of the Forbidden Zone music video. The broad stripe accelerates to the opposite side of the screen while the background becomes increasing frenetic. The timing between …

In and Out

Al Sweigart — Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Traveling lines come in and out from the sides.

In and Out has several "travelers" that come in front the left or right side, fall vertically for a while, and then move back to their side of origin. The background is composed of periods and colons for …

Moire

Al Sweigart — Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Mesmerizing moiré patterns created from the Bresenham circle algorithm.

Moiré patterns come from the imperfections of drawing circles on a grid. The Bresenham circle algorithm yields the x, y Cartesian coordinates for a circle of a given radius. But drawing every circle of, say, radius 1 to …

Skybursts

Al Sweigart — Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Fireworks-like bursts spray downwards. The fireworks effect looks best on a black background to evoke a night sky.

Skybursts was created for the Forbidden Zone music video's finale. Al Sweigart wanted something that evoked fireworks. The lines are generated from a Bresenham line algorithm that he implemented …

Stripeout

Al Sweigart — Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Vertical stripe wipes.

Stripeout is one of the simplest animations Al Sweigart has created, but also one of the most impactful. The cycling between individual columns and broad sweeps is a nice effect. Originally the sweep selection was completely random, but this had the negative side effect …

Skulls and Hearts

Al Sweigart — Sat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A parallax experiment with scroll art with skulls and hearts.

The use of parallax in this piece was discovered by accident. Al Sweigart created Skulls and Hearts as a sequence for the Forbidden Zone music video, but noticed that the hearts in the foreground seemed to move …

Twists

Al Sweigart — Sat, 25 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Vertical columns that twist around each other.

This piece shows vertical columns swapping places with each other, twisting around like bending bamboo poles. The twisting is an illusion: the program doesn't keep track of individual columns but reverts back to the same straight column state after each …

PAC Wall

Al Sweigart — Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Square tiles of directional flow, inspired by the design of the wall of the Performing Arts Center in New York. The cube-shaped building has large square tiles with diagonal stripe designs.

Take a moment to stare at a spot on the screen as this piece scrolls. After …

Torn Textile

Al Sweigart — Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A shredded design reminiscent of a ship's tattered sails.

Torn Textile came out of Al Sweigart's experiments to create a piece that looked like earthworm tunnels through dirt. The screen begins filled with text characters, while several "earthworms" randomly move left and right across the columns, deleting …

Vertical Struts

Al Sweigart — Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Vertical lines that appear like beams across floors of an under-construction skyscraper.

The fast speed and screen-spanning horizontal lines in Vertical Struts give the feeling of an elevator quickly falling through an incomplete skyscraper. Al Sweigart wanted a more cardinal version of the diagonal lines in Triangle …

Diagonal Sweep

Al Sweigart — Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A basic left-to-right or right-to-left sweep transition animation.

Starting from one end of and moving to the other, the columns are set from an empty space to a transition character, followed by an empty space again. This creates a diagonal sweep animation that could be useful for …

Triangle Hall

Al Sweigart — Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Diagonal lines spawning from their horizontally moving predecessors, creating a hallway effect of triangular passages. Inspired by the music video of Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes.

Inchworm

Al Sweigart — Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A little inchworm that moves across the screen.

This is a one-line variant of scroll art, where the \b backspace character is used to erase text on the current line. Snail Trail is another example of this effect. This erasure technically violates one of the constraints of …

Thorns

Al Sweigart — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A rapid pattern that looks like thorns or audio waves.

For Thorns, Al Sweigart wanted a fast-scrolling piece that looked like a frequency-range visualizer for stereos. He originally used complicated sine-wave calculations but got poor results. He then increased the speed and made the lengths randomly selected …

Hex Portals

Al Sweigart — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Hexagon-shaped portals against a scratchy, space-like background.

Snail Trail

Al Sweigart — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Snails gliding across the screen.

Snails glide across the screen in this one-dimensional, or 1D, scroll art. By "printing" the \b backspace character, the program can erase previously printed text on the current line. It prints the @V snail ASCII art, erases it with two backspaces, and …

Orbital Travels

Al Sweigart — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A collection of random points moving in sine waves.

Several of Al Sweigart's attempts to make scroll art are built from complex ideas and complicated code that produce mediocre results. Orbital Travels was an absurdly simple idea that turned into one of his favorite pieces of scroll …

Connected Pipes

Al Sweigart — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Random squiggles that form a sort of connected pipework. There are some isolated sections but no dead ends.

Al Sweigart wanted to use box-drawing characters to form a random but connected shape, something like the old Pipe Dream game (originally called Pipe Mania when released in 1989 …

Diamond Sky

Al Sweigart — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. A star- and diamond-filled sky.

This piece is based on Project 16 - Diamonds from Sweigart's The Big Book of Small Python Projects, which creates ASCII art diamonds of various sizes. Sweigart made Diamond Sky before Full of Squares, but the two share similar styles.

This is the …

Full of Squares

Al Sweigart — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Squares of various sizes.

The box-drawing characters are used to draw squares of various sizes. Al Sweigart created this shortly after Diamond Sky, and it is similar in theme: the same shape of varying sizes floating upwards. He intends to explore what else is possible in this …

Proton Stream

Al Sweigart — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. Lightning streams energetically jittering, like a Ghostbuster's proton pack.

This piece features five "streams" randomly move back and forth. However, they're constrained to be within twenty spaces of each other, moving as a loose group. The fast scroll speed gives an impression of a Ghostbuster's proton pack …

Shining

Al Sweigart — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Al Sweigart, 2024. The hexagon pattern of the carpet in the Overlook Hotel in the 1980 movie, The Shining.

This piece is based on Project 35 - Hex Grid and Project 65 - Shining Carpet from Sweigart's The Big Book of Small Python Projects. The "wallpaper" style of scroll art displays a …

Cube Wall