Where data ceases to be abstract and gains body, memory, and address.
Twelve exhibits across four wings, each pairing a scrollytelling essay with a tactile instrument you can run yourself. Nothing here is a video — every animation is the algorithm itself, executing in your browser.
After Donald E. Knuth · The Art of Computer Programming, Vols. 1–4
Where data ceases to be abstract and gains body, memory, and address.
Euclid's method and the greatest common divisor — the oldest algorithm still in daily use.
How "pointing" to the next address liberated memory from the tyranny of contiguous storage.
Dynamic allocation and the invention of garbage collection.
Where mathematical precision attempts to tame chaos and the limits of infinity.
Generating randomness inside a perfectly deterministic machine.
Squeezing infinite decimals into finite bits — and the catastrophes of rounding.
Modular arithmetic and the agonizing slowness of factoring.
Where we solve civilization's oldest problem: finding a needle in a haystack.
The anatomy of internal sorting, made audible.
Organizing data too large for RAM: the B-tree.
Skipping sorting entirely, via mathematical addressing.
Where we enter the realm of exponential complexity and pure intelligence.
Generating all possibilities — and the terror of combinatorial explosion.
Knuth's legendary exact-cover backtracking: Algorithm X and Dancing Links.
Reducing optimization logic to a lattice of TRUE/FALSE gates.