Small Experiments
Impossible Wheel
Draw an irregular wheel and watch its shape become a road.
A wheel usually has to fit the ground it travels over. Impossible Wheel begins at the other end of that relationship: draw a contour, release it, and the ground takes shape beneath it. Every bump in the wheel becomes a condition that the road must accommodate.
The interaction starts with an empty field. A gesture becomes a body, falls a short distance, and rolls towards the open side of the canvas. Its road appears at the point of contact. Several drawings can move independently, leaving a temporary record of their passage.
The ground is a consequence
The road is calculated from the wheel's outline. Changes in the distance between its centre and its boundary determine the changing height of the track; accumulated distance determines its progress along it. The shape and its path are two readings of the same construction.
This is a deliberately constrained rolling system. Drawn contours are smoothed into a radial outline, so deep concavities and self-intersections are interpreted rather than reproduced literally. That constraint keeps the relationship between wheel and road legible.
Try a different outline
Draw something uneven and watch where the road rises or falls. Drawing on either side sends the wheel towards the other. A local SVG can also supply an outline, carrying its internal marks along for the ride. The experiment asks what happens when an object's apparent awkwardness becomes the rule for its surroundings.
Mathematical source
The rolling construction follows Antonín Slavík and Stan Wagon’s A Minimalist Approach to Rolling Wheels (2026). The experiment brings that construction into an interactive drawing surface.