Liquid ASCII

Liquid ASCII

Ren Shu Tan · Singapore · 2026

The artist

Ren Shu Tan is a Singapore-based artist who works in code. Trained first as an engineer, with a Bachelor of Engineering from the National University of Singapore, and then in finance, with an MSc in Finance from Nanyang Technological University, Tan makes visualizations: images whose shape comes from rules, data and physics rather than from a brush. Tan’s main work is Liquid ASCII, a living web page whose liquid is made of its own source code, with an engine beneath it that makes short films visualising mathematical results solved by Anthropic’s Claude and other frontier AI labs. The practice brings an engineer’s exactness to the screen: measured physical constants, strict typographic rules, and light handled with care. Tan publishes new work at liquidascii.art and on X as @RenshuTan.

The work

Title

Liquid ASCII, 2026

Medium

Real-time generative artwork in the web browser, with an engine beneath it for short films that visualise mathematics

Materials

The page’s own source code (HTML, CSS and JavaScript), shown as text characters; a simulated pool of mercury; light

Dimensions

Variable: the work fills any screen, from a phone to a wall. Film: 1920 × 1080 pixels, 60 frames per second, 1 min 14 s

Physics

Mercury at 20 °C, 3 mm deep: density 13,545 kg/m³, viscosity 1.55 mPa·s, surface tension 0.4865 N/m

Tools and software

HTML, CSS and JavaScript in one file, with no libraries and no build step, written with Claude Code. Canvas 2D draws the characters. Typefaces: JetBrains Mono and Schibsted Grotesk. The film is captured frame by frame in a headless browser and encoded with FFmpeg.

Credits

Made by Ren Shu Tan with Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding agent

Interaction

Move the pointer or touch the screen to send ripples through the code. The first key beside the artist’s name shows or hides the donut; the second plays the film Percolation.

The film

Beneath the liquid is an engine. Given a story, the same page draws lattices, planes and grids with its characters, frame by frame, and becomes a short film.

Percolation, 1 min 14 s. Pour water on porous stone: does it get through? At the tipping point, no cluster is infinite, in every dimension from 2 up: the last open cases were closed by Claude, Anthropic, in August 2026. Expert review continues. Watch it with the second key beside the artist’s name.

The story

I wanted to make art that is native to the computer, in the age of AI. Not a painting or a photograph shown on a screen, but a work made of what a computer is made of: code, characters and light. I chose ASCII characters and RGB colours because they felt the most native to the computer: the text it has always been written in, and the red, green and blue light that every screen is made of.

Liquid ASCII is a web page whose liquid is its own source code. Every character on the screen comes from the page’s own markup and script, and the characters move like a pool of mercury, following its measured density, viscosity and surface tension. Move the pointer or touch the glass, and ripples run through the code itself. The work keeps the rules of a text screen: one character, one colour, four steps of brightness, and no character is ever cut or bent.

I made it together with Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding agent, so the work is itself made in the age it speaks to.

Beneath the liquid is an engine. The same code can draw lattices, planes and grids with its characters, and I use it to make films, like Percolation, that visualise mathematical results solved by Anthropic’s Claude and other frontier AI labs. As AI begins to prove theorems, these films let the results be seen as well as read: each one turns a proof into something you can watch, in the computer’s own material.

liquidascii.art · @RenshuTan on X