Show HN: Silent Poems – Visual expression of unspoken thoughts

[laviniap]

An interactive digital art project that turns typed text into flowing, abstract animated symbols. The symbols connect fluidly, much like handwriting, but in an entirely abstract way. Each letter has its own design, and then each instance of the letter has a different seed such that you have slight differences - the same as with handwriting.

[AstroJetson]

This was fun, I liked playing with it.

I'd like to ask for a feature that I can pass a query string

wwww.silentpoems.net?poem=How+do+I+love+thee%3F+Let+me+count+the+ways.+I+love+thee+to+the+depth+and+breadth+and+height+My+soul+can+reach%2C+when+feeling+out+of+sight+For+the+ends+of+being+and+ideal+grace.

and have the poem rendered. That way I can send poems to my beloved.

[myfonj]

I think it could be neat to leverage ligatures, i.e. preceding glyph could either affect the seed of the next or even make different "cursive" connecting swashes. Words could become pictures with individual "glyphs" blended together.

[laviniap]

that's such a cool idea, I'll play around with it. right now each symbol is independent of its neighbors (except for the bezier curves piecing them together)

[dleink]

and then as long as we're doing logic on variations, the time between keypresses definitely varies.

[myfonj]

And maybe also the press duration; even with preserved auto-repeat, there seems to be quite a variety in typing: getting duration from key-down to key-up between 30 and 120 milliseconds. Naturally we can "squeeze" it up to auto-repeat threshold, which is usually around 500 ms.

What surprised me is how often I have concurrently pressed two or more keys during typing, never occurred to me how frequently key press of the next key happens before the previous key was released. It could also be interesting signal perhaps.)

E: key press duration measurements doodle: https://codepen.io/myf/full/KwPwVWE

[smusamashah]

This is so beautiful. The animations are dynamic, love how every single letter animates dynamically making itself different even if repeated.

Minor problems unless they are intentional: I can't hold on a key and let it type e.g. can't press and hold backspace to clear all text.

When reached at the end, can still type but the text becomes invisible. can't scroll and see that.

[laviniap]

thank you so much! some of that indeed are small bugs that I overlooked, I'll try to fix them soon. the typing of one key at a time is on purpose (this project is meant to be used "in real life" in combination with an analogue typewriter)

[sroussey]

Does not work on mobile (can not type)

[miwaniza]

Click on the question mark at top left twice. Helped on iPhone

[laviniap]

ah great tip, this works for me too (chrome on iOS)

[laviniap]

yes, it's a known issue unfortunately. I couldn't get it to bring up the keyboard (I tried even with a hidden text field) hopefully you can try it on desktop

[westcoast49]

I imagine this could be sold to upscale hotels or concert arenas, for display on a big screen in a reception area or foyer.

[laviniap]

ha definitely fancier than I had in mind! :D thank you

[srean]

Madam I'm Adam

becomes petal hill sunrise

Without case

Or space.

Feature request: could you make d and b have symmetry ? More here https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2022/12/27/visually-symmetric...

[greeniskool]

If you press tab, then Ctrl+A then backspace, you can delete the help icon.

Very cute website, I really like how every glyph looks, some more abstract than others.

[dmje]

Love it, amazing work. Was about to ask you to enable a downloadable image and then right clicked and found you can download the image :-)

[jpopesculian]

https://web.archive.org/web/20241126154751/https://silentpoe...

[barbazoo]

Beautiful, nice work, I bet that was fun!

[laviniap]

hehe yes indeed, making it was a really nice flow

[macu]

Beautiful!

[laviniap]

thank you so much <3

[lovegrenoble]

The animations are awesome

[laviniap]

thank you so much, I really appreciate it

[lbeurerkellner]

This is so awesome.

[laviniap]

thank you so much <3

[phirschybar]

love this.

[laviniap]

thank you so much!