Week 2 – Loops

Concept

This idea came from something super ordinary: looking at the lamp on my desk. I liked how objects close to it felt sharp and bright, while things farther away faded quietly into the background and into the wall. I wanted to capture that shift in attention, where one small light changes the way everything around it feels.

My sketch uses a grid of circles and a drifting light. As the light moves, the circles respond by glowing more when it’s near and dimming when it’s far. The result is a simple pattern that looks somewhat steady but comes alive as the light passes through.

Code I’m proud of

The bit of code I like most is the distance calculation, and how just a few lines of code could turn geometry into behavior!

let d = dist(x, y, lightX, lightY);

if (d < 150) {
  fill(255 - d, 200, 100);
} else {
  fill(50);
}

That small check gives each circle its own response. Some of them glow strongly, others fade away. It’s nothing complex, but it changes the grid from static to responsive, and I like that.

Here’s the work!

Reflections

If I keep developing it, I’d like to make the light follow the mouse so the viewer can interact directly. Multiple lights with different colors could overlap and create more interesting patterns. I could also vary the size or shape of the circles to add depth, so the sketch feels less like a flat grid and more like a living surface.

For now, though, I’m happy with how it turned out. It’s a small experiment, but it was indeed very fun to implement.

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