CHE-YU WU · LAB · 2018–2026

Lab實驗室

I want every work to be a digital life form. It is more fun that way.

Che-Yu Wu, October 2026 (translated from Chinese)

From 2018, Che-Yu Wu wrote his daily sketches on OpenProcessing. On 3 October 2026 all 828 of them moved into a lab he runs himself. Each piece keeps its versions, the piece it was forked from, and in some cases the poem written for it. New pieces also keep every decision he makes along the way.

Enter the Lab ↗︎Every piece ↗︎Family tree ↗︎
Eternal Flame, about ten seconds after it starts in the Lab

A frame ten seconds in. The piece starts running here in a moment

Open in a new window ↗︎

Eternal Flame永恆火焰220103-eternal-flame

pieces
832
selected by him
263
poems
109
families, plus 61 pairs
47
deepest family line
15 gen.
3D Particle Collider ↗︎
years
2018–2026

Numbers read from lab.cheyuwu.com's public data (/api/index.json, /api/lineage.json) when this site was built on 10 October 2026.

01 · NOW EVOLVING

Now evolving

New pieces still growing in the Lab, the most recently changed first. The list and its order are the Lab's own Now evolving page; private pieces show only a name and a thumbnail.

  1. 261008b Idea 02 · Private
  2. 261008 Idea 01 · Private
  3. 261007 Idea 01 · Private
  4. 261004 Cosmic Entropy Time

All 4 in the Lab ↗︎

List read from lab.cheyuwu.com's public data (/api/evolving.json) when this site was built on 10 October 2026.

02 · GROWN INTO WORKS

Grown into works

13 works on this site trace their family tree back to the Lab: 11 daily sketches that later grew into works that were exhibited or released. They are ordered by the date of the sketch, oldest first. Each gene strip is cut from the work's own image, and the sketch name leads back to that day's code.

  1. 2021 · Generative art

    CryptoPochi

    Grew from Sleepy Pochi → 2021

  2. 2021 · Generative art

    Strange Robots → The Hamily

    Grew from Strange Robots → 2021

  3. 2023 · Generative art

    Hamily × The Memes by 6529

    Grew from Strange Robots → 2023

  4. 2021 · Generative art

    Electriz

    Grew from electrization → 2021

  5. 2021 · Generative art

    The Soul

    Grew from The soul → 2021

  6. 2022 · Installation

    Soul Fish

    Grew from 20220331 Soul Fish → 2022

  7. 2022 · Generative art

    Project % · Island

    Grew from mountain test 0512 → 2022

  8. 2023 · Generative art

    The Soul of Flowers

    Grew from Color Pencil Study - Country Field → 2023

  9. 2023 · Installation

    Shape of Mind

    Grew from Shape of Mind → 2023

  10. 2024 · Generative art

    Urban Contour

    Grew from Urban Contour → 2024

  11. 2024 · Generative art

    240507: Reality Lens

    Grew from 240507 → 2024

  12. 2024 · Installation

    The Flower of the Other Shore

    Grew from 3D Particle Collider → 2024 · the sketch is private

  13. 2025 · Installation

    The Coffee Dreamscape

    Grew from 3D Particle Collider → 2025 · the sketch is private

  14. All works →Family tree on this site →

03 · DAILY CODING

Daily coding

Thirty of the 263 selected pieces, taken from each year in proportion and laid out oldest first. The six large ones carry poems. Each opens in the Lab, where the piece runs in the page.

Pieces per year, selected ones in gold

All 263 selected pieces ↗︎Every piece ↗︎

04 · LINEAGE

One grows from another

On 12 January 2021 Che-Yu Wu wrote a sketch called Bee and forked a second version the same day. Two years later, on 20 May 2023, that code grew into Three Stages of Reconstruction, and over the next fourteen days sixteen more pieces grew out of it, down to Feathering in the eighth generation.

The deepest line in the Lab is the 3D Particle Collider family, 22 pieces across 15 generations; The Flower of the Other Shore and The Coffee Dreamscape on this site grew out of it. The tree drawn here is the Bee family, 19 pieces across 8 generations.

The 3D Particle Collider family ↗︎

Each column is a generation and each line a fork. Every piece opens in the Lab.

The Bee family ↗︎All 47 families and 61 pairs ↗︎Family tree on this site →

Most recent

  1. 261004 Cosmic Entropy Time
  2. signer
  3. L-system dynamic tree
  4. black on black #genuary4
  5. Test ecosystem

Newest first, teaching demos left out, the same list as Every piece in the Lab.

2 years later01.1201.1205.2005.2005.2105.2105.2205.2305.2405.2205.2205.2705.2305.2405.2706.0205.2905.2405.27
Gen 1Gen 2Gen 3Gen 4Gen 5Gen 6Gen 7Gen 8
Swipe sideways to see all 8 generations

05 · A POEM

A poem

109 pieces in the Lab carry poems, 64 of them pure poems. This is the same pool as the Lab's front page, and it changes every time you open the page. Poems are shown in Chinese, as he wrote them.

海流來襲，隨著起伏被捲上天空，在洶湧的時代乘浪，隨著浪花起落，選擇奮力向前避免被吞沒，或不留痕跡的消逝於其中。

Digital Ocean數位海洋 · See the piece ↗︎

06 · PLAY

How to play

  1. 01

    Run it in the page

    Every piece runs as soon as you open it, some follow the mouse, and a new window gives you full screen.

    Try Curvy Vine ↗︎Open in a new window ↗︎

  2. 02

    MIDI

    Pieces that use MIDI show a 🎹 in the corner. It opens on-screen controllers (MiniLab 3, LPD8, Launchpad, nanoKONTROL2) you can play with the mouse. Plug in a real controller and the piece follows your hands.

    Try Prebiotic Flake ↗︎Controller source ↗︎

  3. 03

    Fork

    Any piece can grow out of another, taking the code, the memory, or both. The family tree draws every fork, so from any piece you can climb back to its source.

    The Lab family tree ↗︎

  4. 04

    For code and AI

    The data for every public piece sits under /api/, readable by programs and AI agents without opening a browser.

    /api/index.json ↗︎

  5. Open only to Che-Yu for now

    05

    Phone controller

    In the studio each piece has its own room, and a phone that scans its QR code becomes its control surface: tilt, keys and sliders all move the piece. This layer is open only to Che-Yu for now. The controller itself is open source in open-audiovisual.

    Controller source ↗︎

    06

    Talk to a piece

    Once a piece has a name and a poem, it can speak. For now only Che-Yu can talk to it after signing in, through the 💬 on the piece page.

    The page for Flourishing ↗︎

07 · WHY

Why build his own

My principle for making work from now on: one is to experiment without any friction… the other is that whenever I enter a site, a medium, a space, I try each time, early on, to lower my future friction and turn everything into experience.

Che-Yu Wu, 3 October 2026 (translated from Chinese)

OpenProcessing kept his versions and forks, but had no place for the poems and no way back to the works that later went on show. The Lab adds both: each piece page has its poem and a field guide, and links to the work on this site that grew out of it.

Once things got faster, what stopped growing was my drawing by hand.

Che-Yu Wu, 3 October 2026 (translated from Chinese)

So the first seed of a new piece comes, as far as possible, from his hand: a sketch on the iPad, or a phrase played at the piano.