Motion World · 4 of 6
Attention bends the field.
Singularity is an experiment in attention as a physical force. A sparse starfield warps toward an attractor that follows your pointer, drifts on its own, or moves under your arrow keys. Proximity brightens and displaces: what can be seen depends on where attention rests. GA made it to practise long visual breath, comfortable motion and enhancement that never blocks the content.
Keyboard path: focus the canvas and use the arrow keys. The attractor is the same variable the pointer controls.
Poster: a starfield bent by an attractor.
A still field: sparse points of light bent gently toward a single quiet centre, brightest where attention rests.
Move to bend the field, or focus the canvas and use arrow keys to nudge the attractor. Nothing here tracks you.
Technical note
How it works
Stars hold fixed home positions. Each frame, an apparent position is computed by displacing every star toward the attractor by an amount that falls off smoothly with distance, capped so nothing crosses the centre and nothing strobes. Brightness rises gently near the lens. The attractor eases toward its target at four and a half percent per frame, which is why the field breathes rather than snaps.
Without a pointer, the attractor follows a slow autonomous drift. Arrow-key nudges offset that drift, so the keyboard path controls the same variable as the pointer, not a lesser one. There is no parameter panel: the technical behaviour is documented here in words, where it can be searched and read.
Performance choices
- The starfield is capped between 280 and 640 stars, scaled by screen area.
- One radial gradient per frame; stars are plain rectangles with no shadows or filters.
- The loop pauses when the stage scrolls offscreen, and pixel ratio is capped at two.
Accessibility and comfort
Nothing essential lives in the canvas: the premise and the behaviour are described on this page in text. With prefers-reduced-motion set, the static interpretation stands in and the canvas never starts. Motion is deliberately slow, the field is near-black with sparse light, and there is no flashing. The canvas is focusable and announces its arrow-key control to assistive technology.
From laboratory to client work
What this practises
Singularity is progressive enhancement as a physical metaphor: the page is complete without the effect, the effect deepens with capability, and the input adapts to the visitor instead of demanding a specific device. That is the standard GA applies to website design: content first, motion as a layer that earns its place, and no visitor locked out of the meaning.
Enhancement, graded honestly
The Samples page arranges the same principle at 200 capability levels, so you can see exactly what each level of motion and interaction costs.