by DonHopkins | 2025-08-19 12:26:45+00:00
Very nice! I love the way the leash droops from gravity when you give it some slack, to unobtrusively and intuitively show users what's really going on, how the control system actually works, so it's tangible and physical, not a mysterious unpredictable black box. True honest wysiwyg "direct manipulation", no invisible magic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_manipulation_interface

It reminds me of artist/engineer's Paul Haeberli's legendary and monumentally influential "DynaDraw" which he wrote at SGI.

DynaDraw: A Dynamic Drawing Technique (June 1989):

https://web.archive.org/web/19970605062552/http://www.sgi.co...

>Here's a really fun and useful hack.

>The program Dynadraw implements a dynamic drawing technique that applies a simple filter to mouse positions. Here the brush is modeled as a physical object with mass, velocity and friction. The mouse pulls on the brush with a synthetic rubber band. By changing the amount of friction and mass, various kinds of strokes can be made. This kind of dynamic filtering makes it easy to create smooth, consistent calligraphic strokes.

>The C source for the dynadraw demo program is available. You can save this onto your IRIS, compile it, and give it a try. If you're a Mac or PC hacker, you might be able to port this program easily to your own platform.

Source Code (for SGI GL):

https://web.archive.org/web/19970727185417/http://www.sgi.co...

Lots more great stuff from Paul Haeberli on his "Graphica Obscura" page:

https://web.archive.org/web/19970706205455/http://www.sgi.co...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Haeberli

He inspired another artist/engineer Golan Levin to write an implementation of DynaDraw with Processing and p5.js:

https://editor.p5js.org/golan/sketches/cZPRgx6q9

// This is a rudimentary p5.js 'port' of Paul Haeberli's // legendary and monumentally influential program "Dynadraw", // which is described at: http://www.sgi.com/grafica/dyna/index.html // Originally created in June 1989 by Paul Haeberli (@GraficaObscura) // Ported to Processing January 2004 by Golan Levin (@golan) // Ported to p5.js September 2021 by Golan Levin.

Golan does a mind blowing amount of amazingly creative stuff:

http://www.flong.com/archive/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Levin

I love his Double-Taker (Snout) (2008):

http://www.flong.com/archive/projects/snout/index.html

He explained that and more in this Ted talk "Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G0MzlfMPuM

>As Joy Mountford once said, "The mouse is probably the narrowest straw you could try to suck all of human expressions through."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Mountford

I also love "Rouen Revisited" (1996)̀, a "monumental" architectural visualization that Golan Levin and another artist/engineer Paul Debevec collaborated on at Interval Research Labs, which led to Paul's later work at USC:

http://www.flong.com/archive/projects/rouen/index.html

Paul Debevec teaches and researches at USC and Eyeline Studios (powered by Netflix):

https://www.pauldebevec.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Debevec

Paul Debevec's "Light Stage" was featured in The Congress (2013), in the dramatically riveting and technically accurate scan scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8

More links:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34953477