Sungyeon Hong
  • Research
    • Overview
    • Order, disorder and in-between
    • Information dynamics
    • Embodied complexity
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Interactive explorations · Learning tools · Open demos

Resources

This page gathers browser-based demonstrations developed across my research and teaching. Some accompany particular projects elsewhere on the website; others stand alone as invitations to explore foundational ideas in complexity, emergence, geometry, topology, and collective behaviour.

Each demo is designed to be used experimentally: change one condition, watch what follows, and ask how local rules, initial states, or interactions shape the larger pattern.

Good places to begin

Foundations of complexity

These demos introduce two widely useful ways of thinking about complex systems: how simple local rules generate emergent behaviour, and how structure changes as our notion of proximity changes.

Cellular automata · Emergence

Conway's Game of Life

Explore how a two-dimensional cellular automaton can generate stable forms, oscillators, travelling structures, and long-lived transients from a minimal rule set. Two editable grids make it possible to compare how small differences in initial conditions reshape the system's future.

What to notice

Local rules, sensitivity to initial conditions, persistence, extinction, and unexpected pattern formation.

Launch demo →
Topology · Shape of data

Persistent Homology

Grow neighbourhoods around a point cloud and watch connected components and loops appear and disappear across scale. The linked persistence diagram helps reveal which structures endure and which are short-lived.

What to notice

Connectivity, loops, scale, noise, and the distinction between fleeting and persistent structure.

Launch demo →
From current research

Research-led experiments

The following demos translate ideas from my research into interactive form. They can also be found from the relevant research-theme or project pages; this collection provides a single place to browse them together.

Order, disorder, and in-between

Geometry-driven Hyperuniformity

Follow a point pattern through Lloyd iterations and examine how local geometric optimisation reorganises the system. Track energy, displacement, local topology, orientational order, and low-wave-number structure.

Pattern formation Self-organisation Spatial order
Explore the demo →
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Embodied complexity · Group activity

Musical Homeostasis v.1

Use music to experience self-organisation directly. Each participant begins with an arbitrary note, listens locally, and adapts while the group searches for a shared musical equilibrium. The activity works best with three or more people in the same room.

Collective dynamics Feedback Equilibrium
Start the activity →
Embodied complexity · Generative music

Melodic Homeostasis

Enter or play a short motif, then generate and compare several musical continuations using transparent rules of motif loyalty, exploration, tension, and resolution. Listen to each trajectory, inspect its piano-roll shape, or export it as MIDI.

Initial conditions Rule-based generation Musical trajectories
Compose from a motif →
A simple way to explore

Change one thing at a time

Begin with the default state, then vary a single initial condition, parameter, or local rule. Observe not only what changes, but also what remains stable. Repeating this process helps reveal feedback, thresholds, path dependence, robustness, and other signatures of complex behaviour.

1 Observe 2 Perturb 3 Compare 4 Reflect