Mandra Corners
A generative algorithm derived from watching a human hand draw.
WE MAKE, THE UNIVERSE TAKES
Headphones strongly recommended. The 3D version on a large screen is something else entirely.
Mandra Corners is a living drawing that never makes the same thing twice.
It begins with a single square and a simple rule borrowed from the way a human hand draws: find the corner where exactly two lines meet, extend three parallel lines outward, connect their endpoints. A new face appears. New corners become available. The process repeats — forever, or until it needs to catch its breath.
As the structure grows, it ages. Fresh strokes are dark ink. Over ninety seconds they move through spring greens, summer golds, autumn ambers, and winter blues — different clusters in different seasons simultaneously, the canvas a landscape where time moves differently in different places. Completed faces slowly paint themselves with watercolor. Bells ring, softly, as each cube finishes — the sound placed in three-dimensional space, trailing into reverb. A pool of drone voices hums the harmonic character of each season, migrating between faces like bees between flowers. Every hundred strokes or so, the drawing pauses, exhales, and begins again.
The algorithm was discovered, not invented. It encodes the same geometric decision a human hand makes instinctively — and it turns out that instinct is mathematically precise, generalizable to three dimensions, and capable of generating structures of indefinite complexity from a rule simple enough to state in a single sentence.
This work was made because it seemed cool. No other reason. Which turns out, as usual, to be reason enough.
“I could just watch this for hours.”
— a student, on seeing Mandra Corners projected on a classroom screen
READ THE WORK
Drawing With a Partner Who Has No Hands
A co-authored essay about the collaboration that produced Mandra Corners — what made it work, why it’s different from conventional AI-assisted creation, and what it suggests about the future of human-AI creative partnership for people with deep domain expertise.
Mandra Corners: A Hand-Drawing-Derived Algorithm for Organic Geometric Growth in 2D and 3D Space
The formal algorithm paper, with definitions, 2D and 3D formulations, implementation notes, spatial audio documentation, and full citations.
Mandra Corners is open source. The complete 2D and 3D implementations are self-contained HTML files — no installation, no dependencies. Open in any modern browser.
Chris Mandra & Claude (Anthropic) · alienConsumerSciences · 2026