booleanSequence by Antonio Pezzella (niceunderground) is a real-time generative system built on a single rule that can run with different pairs of characters: plus and minus, zero and one, greater and less than. The system knows two values and nothing else.
Elements are born one at a time out of nothing, each taking one of the two values, never a third. Similar values seek each other: isolated cells form groups, groups become territories. Where one value ends, the other begins; borders touch and contaminate each other, but there is no middle ground. No configuration lasts: positions swap, the field dissolves and rebuilds itself, never quite the same. Four verbs, to be born, to attract, to exclude, to disappear, all governed by a single rule.
The identity of each configuration never lies in the individual characters, but in the way they combine. The work behaves like a computational yin and yang: two opposites that swap places and influence each other without ever merging, and that instead of resting in balance keep rebuilding it from scratch.
Watching it feels like looking down on a society from above: opposing sides competing for territory, contaminating each other and sharing the same ecosystem. No side wins for long, and neither ever disappears. The same binary logic that governs the characters on screen can be read as the macroscopic movement of a community, its polarisations, its shifting borders.
Changing the pair of characters does not change the rule, but it changes the behaviour of the field. Plus and minus, in red and black, produces large territories that keep changing hands. Zero and one, in white and black, mixes the two sides almost cell by cell, more a crowd than a map. Greater and less than, in blue and white, produces a wide and slow field, almost a map of two nations. Zero and one is the most elementary pair, the one the others start from.
The system belongs to a long line of work on emergence, from cellular automata, where minimal local rules produce complex global patterns [1], to Thomas Schelling’s models of segregation, where small individual preferences add up to sharp collective borders [2]. The association between binary code and duality is older still: in 1703 Leibniz related binary arithmetic to the hexagrams of the I Ching [3].
booleanSequence was exhibited at TRIP 2026, the third edition of the diffuse festival of contemporary art, design and architecture by the Barriera Design District APS association, devoted to the theme “Oltre” (Beyond), with artistic direction and curation by Lucrezia Nardi. At the festival’s Secret Location in Barriera di Milano, Turin, on 3 and 4 October 2026, the work ran on three computers resting on an abandoned, dust-covered desk, one per pair of characters. No one in front of the screens, no one operating the machines: the system kept being born, attracting, excluding and disappearing on its own, like a society that goes on even when no one is watching or governing it.
Created with custom software written in JavaScript with p5.js, generating the visuals in real time. Each cell samples a Perlin noise field that changes over time; a threshold splits the field into two values, so every cell always holds one of the two characters and never a third. Thresholds vary between sketches: the same rule, tuned differently, produces large territories in one version and a fine, crowd-like mix in another. Exhibited at TRIP 2026 on 3 Windows PCs resting on an abandoned desk, one per pair of characters, running in Chrome in fullscreen.
Project Page | Antonio Pezzella | Instagram
booleanSequence, 2026. Real-time generative system. Custom software, no audio. Variable configuration and dimensions.
Concept, design and code: Antonio Pezzella (niceunderground)
Photos and video: Antonio Pezzella (niceunderground)
Exhibited at TRIP 2026, Barriera Design District APS. Artistic direction and curation: Lucrezia Nardi. Supported by Fondazione CRT.
