Very nice. I love the last few seconds. And yes, would be lovely to get into these algorythms.

thanks for the nice words.
the algorithm is quite simple (and may be totally wrong) but its based on bits and pieces extracted from e.g.these links: haque.tumblr.com/post/25464678
it's pretty much a normal particle system with the following position modifier which makes particles have both short-range attractive and long-range repulsive forces (i.e. here attraction is proportional to 1/d^2 and repulsion is proportional to 1/d^3):

distance = sqrt(sq(dx) sq(dy));

if (distance > 2.0){ // to avoid infinity
if (distance < minDistance){
minDistance distance;
closest = i;
c[i].connect();
}

attraction = attractionConstant / (distance * distance);
repulsion = repulsionConstant / ( distance * distance * distance);

attraction -= repulsion;
xChange = attraction * dx;
yChange = attraction * dy;
totalXChange = xChange;
totalYChange = yChange;
}