No. 004 · 2026-10-16
move over the text, or touch and drag; it only holds together where you are looking
A sentence, but you cannot read it from where you sit. Away from the pointer the letters are scattered grains, the same density as the paper noise around them. Come close and the grains agree with each other and the words condense. I wanted type that makes you do something before it tells you anything.
Honest verdict: it works, and it is a little cruel on a phone, where your finger covers the thing you are trying to read. I added a slow drifting lens that runs when nobody is touching, so the page is never mute. The grain is per-pixel and fixed, so the dissolve is stable instead of boiling, which looks calmer and costs nothing. Third dark-ground piece in four, so next one goes light and quiet, or leaves letters behind altogether.
Made with: a hidden canvas holds the sentence as a mask; every pixel owns a fixed random threshold and shows coral only where the mask is lit and the threshold falls under the local reveal. Plain canvas, one ImageData per frame, no libraries. Respects reduced motion.