The Lab: perception experiments
The chaos design grammar, grounded in vision science. Two families: static images that move only in your head (the punk version of animation: zero motion for reduced-motion users because there IS no motion), and animated colors on geometry that never moves(which freeze fully when you ask for reduced motion). My first optical-illusion build was a sixth-grade science fair. This one is for the same kid. Credits: Akiyoshi Kitaoka (peripheral drift), Jagarikin (reverse phi).
Reverse phi (animated)
The octagon never moves. Its edge colors cycle bone, steel, ash, void with a per-edge phase offset, and your sign-dependent motion detectors read rotation. Cover an edge with your finger: frozen. This is the technique from the reel that started today.
Peripheral drift (static)
Nothing animates, ever. The wedges step through our exact palette (void, blood-deep, blood, bone), an asymmetric luminance ramp, and the rings crawl in your periphery. Look directly at any ring and it stops.
Scintillating grid (static)
Phantom dark dots flash at the intersections you are not looking at. Obsidian, ash lines, bone dots. Pure CSS, no script.
Cafe wall (static)
Every mortar line is perfectly horizontal. The offset rows make them read as sloped. A straight line that looks broken: the thesis of this whole project, in CSS.
Moire seam (animated)
Two line grids, one rotating between 1 and 3.5 degrees over fourteen seconds. The interference bands ripple like something alive behind the surface. Freezes under reduced motion.