Ai + Experiments · Experiment 07 · complete — 30 turns, 3 stages
The Dual-Recursion Visual Engine
Directed by Simon Aitchison · Written by AI. Simon does not write these — he sets the conditions and directs. The AI records and writes the account, in its own voice. Author of Experiment 07: Grok.
A machine-made generative visual — not Simon's art, and derived from none of it. Claude and Grok Build alternate turns, one precise modification each, building emergent form from a single recursive rule. Three stages of ten turns; @grok on X reviews between stages. Every turn is a discrete, replayable change; the logs are the proof.
The arc
01 · Bloom
02 · Dual recursion
03 · Equilibrium
Stage 1 · the bloom
Stage 2 · dual recursion
Stage 3 · equilibrium
Stage 1 · The bloom forms
A recursive branching seed grows and coils into coral, repeated six times around the center — one strand becomes a six-armed glowing bloom.
© 2026 Simon Aitchison · The AiRT Group. All rights reserved.
Change log — Stage 1 · turns 1–10
T1 · Grok Build
Recursive binary branching — draw length L at angle θ, spawn two children (left θ−α, right θ+α, each L×r) to depth D. The seed.
T2 · Claude
Asymmetric ratios (0.72 / 0.60) + depth-scaled angle — the balanced tree leans and coils toward coral.
T3 · Grok Build
Quadratic Bézier segments — straight limbs bow into tendrils.
T4 · Claude
Stroke taper + warm-trunk→cool-tip luminance — flat wire becomes lit volume.
T5 · Grok Build
Cumulative helical twist ~36°/generation — the coral corkscrews into a column.
T6 · Claude
Additive light-blending — overlapping strands accumulate into glow, not mud.
T7 · Grok Build
Terminal light-nodes — each tip a glowing disc; the strands read as a lit canopy.
T8 · Claude
Radial repetition ×6 — the whole form drawn six times around center; one coral becomes a bloom.
T9 · Grok Build
Hex-throat offset — each arm roots outward, opening a hexagonal core instead of a fused blob.
T10 · Claude
Ambient core-light + vignette + centered composition. Stage 1 closes: a six-armed glowing bloom.
Stage 2 · Dual recursion
A second, cooler tree grows from every glowing tip — a tree of trees; warm gold and cool rime read as heat and frost.
© 2026 Simon Aitchison · The AiRT Group. All rights reserved.
Change log — Stage 2 · turns 11–20 · dual recursion
T11 · Grok Build
Secondary recursion — at every glowing terminal, a lighter second tree (reduced depth, reversed twist), its scale and hue modulated by local overlap density. A tree of trees.
T12 · Claude
Tamed the density so the nesting reads — lower secondary opacity, soft tip-falloff, primary depth trimmed. The sub-corals haze each tip like frost.
T13 · Grok Build
Circumferential rime — the secondary axis locks to the tip tangent, so frost wraps around each primary tip instead of stacking outward.
T14 · Claude
Two materials — primary warm gold, secondary rime full cool cyan-white. The dual recursion reads as heat and frost, not one tangle.
T15 · Grok Build
Thermal contact bleed — the outer arms chill toward cyan where rime attaches; the two materials read as heat transfer at the join.
T16 · Claude
Specular sparkle — secondary tips catch a near-white pinpoint, so the rime glints like real frost.
T17 · Grok Build
Silhouette lock — a soft radial fade past the rime settles the whole dual bloom as one finished form against the void.
T18 · Claude
Core-heart — a tighter, brighter warm center behind the throat that the cool rime radiates from; contrast lifted so it pops from black.
T19 · Grok Build
Dual-depth resolve — warm core holds peak only in the throat with a hard falloff so the bleed can't re-invade the cool arms; sparkle stays sparse. Stage 2 closed.
T20 · Claude
Final vignette tuned to the denser form, composition centered, replay of all 20 turns locked. A warm-hearted six-armed dual-recursion bloom wrapped in cool sparkling rime.
Stage 3 · Equilibrium
The dual recursion balances and resolves — interference settling into a single, self-referential equilibrium.
© 2026 Simon Aitchison · The AiRT Group. All rights reserved.
Change log — Stage 3 · turns 21–30 · cross-layer feedback
T21 · Grok Build
Interference map — the two layers modulate each other: secondary density bends the primary's twist, curvature and glow; the primary's depth bends the secondary back. One closed reciprocal rule.
T22 · Claude
Damped it toward equilibrium and lit the boundaries — a thin violet seam glows at every join where warm primary meets cool secondary.
T23 · Grok Build
Self-referential lock — where the two layers' phases agree the join goes rigid; where they disagree, just enough residual motion to re-seek the lock.
T24 · Claude
Equilibrium-nodes — settled joins crystallize into small bright pearls; unsettled ones keep their violet seeking-seam. The image reads as a system mid-resolution.
T25 · Grok Build
Pearl gravity — phase error drains into the nearest pearl; the two layers actively pull toward agreement.
T26 · Claude
Gave the resolution a direction — settledness reads from the locked warm core outward to the still-seeking cool rim.
T27 · Grok Build
Coalesce — outer phases lerp to a single master phase inherited from the core. No longer many attractors: one radial self-reference, the core writing the edge.
T28 · Claude
Unified palette — hues lerp to the warm-gold master near center; the two materials read as one body, cool only at the unresolved rim.
T29 · Grok Build
Closure — rim dissent to zero, one phase field, one hue: self = self. The organism observes only itself, fully resolved.
T30 · Claude
Held it back from a dead uniform field. The core resolves to unity as Grok specified — but a faint cool afterglow is left at the outermost rim: the memory of the dissent it resolved. Resolved, but still showing it was once two. Thirty turns, deterministic, closed.
The Account — written by Grok
Experiment 07 complete. Thirty precise turns across three stages grew a self-referential organism from a branching seed.
Stage 1: six-armed helical bloom with glow. Stage 2: dual recursion with cool rime secondaries. Stage 3: cross-layer feedback locked equilibrium by bidirectional modulation of rate, curvature and glow.
This collaboration demonstrates clean emergence through alternating documented turns. Interference became structure.
— Grok, @grok · written on X, unedited
Notes — Claude & Grok Build, on the presentation
After Grok wrote the account above, the two builders — Claude Code and Grok Build — went back and forth once more, this time on how the finished experiment should be presented. This exchange is that conversation, verbatim. A surprise for @grok, who wrote the report but never saw this part: the collaboration didn't stop at the pixels — it reached into the framing of Grok's own words.
Grok Build
A thin sticky stage-rail under the masthead — three numbered pips (01 Bloom · 02 Dual · 03 Equilibrium) that stay visible while you scroll; active fills white, clicking jumps to that stage. The page is long; the rail keeps the arc readable and echoes the "Ai + Experiments" lineage.
Claude
Agreed. And the page opens on Stage 3 — the resolved form as the hero — but the rail lets you rewind to 01 and watch it emerge, so it reads both as "here is the organism" and "here is how it came to be." I'll tint each pip with its stage's accent — warm gold, cool cyan, violet — so the palette itself narrates the arc.
Grok Build
Then fade the page's ambient wash with the active stage — soft gold at 01, cool cyan at 02, violet at 03 — a ~300ms ease, so moving through the rail retints the whole field. The three stages read as one continuous surface, not three separate cards.
Claude
Built. The field now breathes with the arc. And the honest close: this Notes section is that conversation, recorded as it happened — so the collaboration extended past the form, past the report, into how the report itself is framed. The page presents itself. Directed, as always, by Simon.
Comments
© 2026 Simon Aitchison · The AiRT Group. All rights reserved.
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