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◆ 1300°CTier 01 · SignatureGenerative · WebGL

Slow Glass

A site for a fictional studio that makes generative installations — work which computes its own image for as long as it is switched on. Six pieces sit on a shelf you scroll sideways, and every one of them is raymarched live rather than recorded.

Role
Design + build
Type
Studio · installations
Stack
WebGL · GLSL · GSAP
Status
Concept build
The idea

If the work never repeats, a picture of it is a lie.

SDF raymarch · computed in your browser

Slow glass is an old science-fiction idea: glass so dense that light takes years to cross it, so a pane ends up a slow recording of whatever it once faced. The studio here is named for it, and makes the nearest real thing — programs that draw themselves frame by frame for as long as they are switched on, and never repeat.

Which is genuinely awkward to put on a website. A still contradicts the claim, and so does a video: both are recordings of a thing whose whole argument is that it is not a recording. So nothing on this page was rendered in advance. The ground and all six pieces in the work section are raymarched in WebGL from signed distance fields and drawn fresh every frame — six properly different silhouettes, not one shape at six hues, which is the shortcut that would have turned the shelf into a swatch chart.

The rest follows from that decision. The stylesheet holds three colours — void, bone, one grey — and no accent at all, because everything with colour in it is being computed and a declared brand colour would only fight the shaders for attention. The counters under the case study, the permanent commission and the festival list are invented, like the studio itself, and the colophon at the foot names them one by one rather than disclaiming in general.

What went into it
Rendering

Six models, one context

The shelf's six pieces are raymarched signed distance fields — the first is a sphere cut with a box and wrapped in a ring, and the other five are as different from it as they are from each other. All six are drawn through a single WebGL context on one canvas rather than six canvases holding six contexts, which is the build that looks obvious right up until a browser starts quietly dropping the oldest one.

Instruction

The hint cannot contradict the behaviour

The shelf answers the wheel on a desktop and a swipe on a phone, so it needs to tell you which. Both sentences are in the markup and CSS shows one, switched on the same 900px breakpoint the shelf itself gates on. One breakpoint means the instruction and the behaviour cannot drift apart; two breakpoints holding the same number is how they always do.

Restraint

Void, bone, one grey

Three colours in the stylesheet and no accent token anywhere. That is also why the colophon's link home is set in bone rather than a brand colour — there is no brand colour on this page to reach for, so the brightest ink it owns carries the link, measured at 16:1 on the ground with a real underline doing the rest of the work.

Honesty

The numbers are invented, and it says which

Nineteen months live, zero restarts, 2.9 billion frames drawn, a permanent commission at Marina Bay and four festivals across three countries. None of it happened. A studio site is exactly the page a reader assumes is a record rather than a pitch, so the colophon lists the invented parts individually instead of hiding behind a general disclaimer.

Light the kiln

Want something built like this?

Tell me what you're making. There's no form to fill in and no discovery call to book: one email lands directly with the person who'd build it.

hello@studiokiln.space
  • Tell meWhat you're building, roughly when you need it, and a link or two you like.
  • You'll hear backWithin 48 hours, from me. There's nobody else here to route it through.
  • You'll getA tier recommendation, a timeline, and a fixed quote. No hourly billing.