The Triangle Game — an exercise in emergent choreography
Inspired by Marcus du Sautoy (Around the World in 80 Games). 'Written' by Andy Cotgreave with Claude Opus 4.6. Follow Andy on LinkedIn
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How The Triangle Game Works
Each actor on the stage secretly picks two other actors. When you press Go, every actor simultaneously tries to position themselves to form a perfect equilateral triangle with their two chosen actors.
The catch? Those other actors are also moving — chasing their own triangles. This creates a beautiful chain of dependencies where simple individual rules produce complex, unpredictable group behaviour.
This is emergence: no one is choreographing the dance, yet patterns form, dissolve, and reform organically.
Scatter = randomise positions & assignments Reassign = new targets, same positions Popularity = colour by how many actors are watching each one
When paused, right-click and drag any actor to move them — watch how it ripples through the network!
Inspired by Marcus du Sautoy (Around the World in 80 Games). 'Written' by Andy Cotgreave with Claude Opus 4.6. Follow Andy on LinkedIn
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Chaos
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Chaos Score measures how far all actors are from their ideal equilateral triangle positions. It's the average distance each actor needs to travel to complete their triangle, normalised to 0–100.