adroste: a matter of perspective

adroste began as an exploration of reversing the Droste effect (a technique in which an image is recursively nested within itself).

Originally applied in static images, the Droste effect has since found extensive use in animation, particularly in endless-loop GIFs. It offers an elegant, seamless way to reset the scene to its original state, reinforcing a continuous, unbroken narrative through the illusion of infinite zoom.

While the Droste effect nests an image within itself, adroste takes the opposite approach: expanding an image outward toward itself. Here, the initial cube forms part of the final cube, which paradoxically appears to be the initial cube - creating a continuous, recursive loop.

To create this effect, I chose to focus on manipulating perspective within a static scene. Despite appearances, the cubes themselves remain stationary in "objective" space — they don’t converge toward a larger cube. Instead, only the camera moves. By traveling through the scene, the viewer’s perspective reaches a point where all the distant cubes align and appear to merge.

I see this approach as an invitation to reflect on the observer’s influence on the fabric of reality, on quantum metaphysics, Gestalt and Op art principles. When is there one cube, and when are there many? What brings them together if they aren’t moving? Do they truly merge? And haven't they always been conceived as merged from the start?

To journey further into the metaphysical, visual psychedelics can sometimes help perceive reality with greater clarity. adroste uses fxparams to let you choose the dose that best suits you before embarking on this journey.

This work is animated and can be resized and exported as a seamless looping GIF.

Features and Interaction
- Pause & Menu Access: Click on the animated painting to open the menu. Click again on the painting to hide the menu and restart the animation.
- Size: Define the frame size, then confirm by clicking OK to apply the change.
- GIF Export: Save the current animation as a GIF.
- Frame Navigation: Move between frames with the < X / Y > selector.
- PNG Export: Save a snapshot of the current frame as a PNG.
- Sync: Synchronize multiple screens using webRTC (highly experimental with challenging user experience; intended for the adventurous).

adroste was created and developed by Nico in 2024 using a custom-crafted codebase that incorporates various open-source libraries:
- Generic libraries (wgpu, winit, wasm-bindgen, etc.) for working with Rust in the browser and GPU.
- Stefan Gustavson's psrdnoise WGSL implementation.
- Matt DesLauriers's gifenc JS library for encoding GIFs.
- Eli Grey's FileSaver JS library for downloading files.

Copyright © 2024 Nicolas Arbogast
(See the LICENSE file included for details and contact information.)

adroste was mainly developed on Brave (chromium) and tested on other modern web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge), on recent powerful devices (macbook pro, iphone), in MacOS and iOS environments.