Generative artist Jared Tarbell’s Happy Place (2004) remains a formative work in creative coding, visualising social dynamics through coloured nodes that attract or repel each other according to simple relational rules. The algorithm traces these interactions over time, rendering emergent structures from minimal logic. This project revisits Happy Place through a contemporary lens, asking how such generative systems might be re-imagined through new technologies, platforms, and inputs.

This adaptation ported the original work to C++ using OpenFrameworks, preserving the core interaction logic while expanding the visual output into three dimensions by mapping time along the z-axis. The project was further re-imagined as an iOS application that transforms the work into an abstract photography tool: rather than loading a static image, the system draws live input from the device’s camera, applying the generative algorithm in real time to pixels from the real-time image. These adaptations allow Happy Place to function simultaneously as a dynamic visualiser, a photographic filter, and a time-based drawing system responsive to the world around it.

By transforming a historically significant generative artwork into a responsive, camera-driven system, this project bridges the gap between code-based art heritage and contemporary mobile interaction. It repositions generative art not only as aesthetic exploration but also as a lens—both literal and conceptual—through which to experience and interpret one’s immediate surroundings. Presented as both a screen-based visualisation and an interactive mobile app, the work invites reflection on how generative principles continue to inspire new creative tools and modes of engagement.