How a WY begins, and what actually changes it.

Three rules govern every WY. They're simple on purpose — the interesting part is what they add up to.

1. Arrival creates a permanent identity

The moment you first arrive, your WY is assigned a unique, permanent structure — its form, its position, its underlying character. This never changes again. Everything that happens later is layered on top of it, never a replacement for it.

2. Refreshing changes nothing

Reloading the page, closing and reopening the tab, coming back a minute later — none of it touches the artwork. WY.GONE only recognizes something as a real event if real time has genuinely passed since your last visit.

3. Absence and return are the only forces that develop it

When you stay away and then come back, that gap is measured and it changes the work — a longer absence gives it more to respond to than a short one. Come back too quickly and the work notices that too. None of this is undone by looking again; a real return is a real event, recorded once, permanently.

What you can verify yourself

Open WY.GONE, note your artwork's form, then refresh the page a dozen times — it will not move. Close the tab, wait, and come back later, and you'll see the difference. That's the entire mechanism: identity from arrival, development only from genuine absence and return.

Read more about what makes this a "living" artwork, or the generative art principles behind it.