"poke a face" demo.

This could be done in a p5 app. I just want a circle that giggles and jitters when you poke at it. It'd be a good pre-cursor to other experiences I want to make like "A Blob Named Bucket".

Probably won't get to it until next week. This has been added to my priority group.

Goal will be to figure out initial technical scaffolding, getting p5 in a windowed context, mouse pointer stuff, etc.

It's a good contrast from the vocal chords demo, and a good way to start the more whimsical toyetic vocal demos.

Not a good sign for future developments on the thinkpad.

Chromium plays isorhythms okay! Just one of those things.

Now that things work if we "run in chromium" (sigh), things can move forward.

Found the documentation: https://archive.p5js.org/reference/#/p5/p5.

Going to put it in a 400x400 window, or something.

scratch that, let's see what 400x680 does. approximately pacman proportions.

It doesn't work, but it's a good start.

The most important thing for this demo is the vocal-like chattering. So this example will more or less aim to build the model. The new thing to try out will be morphing between DRM shapes. The critter here will be quite small, so the tract size wlil be quite small.

I will be thinking more about the design today.

The offline example should have some parts that will eventually be designed to be modulated by user input (poking). Poking can be simulating using a triggered gate. The gate would go into an envelope (envelopes?) of some sort as way to shape things like fundamental pitch and jitter.

Basically, my source of inspiration for this one are those poptart commercials that were around during the early 2000s <<demos/poptarts>>

It'd be nice to get collision working for the eyes, because I think they will bulge out of the face occasionally.

Mouth shape needs to be flexible enough to support mouth shapes. I want these to be synchronized with the mouth shapes being synthesized by the audio.

This will drive the tgate. This can be made from a phasor. Any time the phasor resets, produce a trigger.

Created a phasor to trigger utility called PhasorTrig

Actually, I'm building out a metro that combines phasor and phasortrig.

I will opt to port the envelope I made in sndkit.

Now it works. Forgot to add the exp and update pgate.

Chatter sound needs to be consolidated into a struct rather than in a main function. There also needs to be a poke method, which will eventually be the thing called when the user pokes the circle on the screen.

So I think this task can be considered completed. The rest of the sound design work will be polish for the poke demo.

Up to this point, "poking" has been simulating using a metro object. This metro needs to be pulled out of the struct, and replaced with a gate fed into a threshold generator. The metro function will exist outside, and when it ticks an impulse, it will call the poke method. The poke method will flip a gate signal on and off. Inside ChatterBox, it will detect changes in the gate and turn those into triggers like before.

It works! It's a coarse experience, but it sorta works.

termux is awesome, because I can run it locally on my phone.

It works. definitely needs some refinement. But a good enough stopping point.

Okay that works! Nice.

Visuals: eyes and mouth, make sure they all collide against walls. Sounds: use envelope to modulate pitch, used smoothed gate for amplitude (decay doesn't work).

Resist the urge to tune and tweak all day.

open/close and shape morphing

Sometimes the pokes don't register because you are out of bounds.

That way, eyeballs can go off screen. I'm not going to do collision checks on mouth/eyes. Not worth the time.

I wasn't hearing what I wanted to hear. Turns out the jitter was getting in the way. 10:45 Android testing again #demo-poke #timelog:00:03:38 Feels okay enough. Maybe a bit too shrill on phone speakers. But I'll worry about mixing another time.

I've gotten good feedback from people, and was really interested in watching people interact with it. It's apparently has startled many cats! I may want to scope out some follow-up improvemnts to this, if there's time. Some things include: wall collision sounds, more dynamic interactions when poking, more variation in sound, and more empathy mechanics (feeding, laughter/tickling, etc).

Yesterday I showed another person my Poke demo [0]. Another very visceral response: "why did you make me do that to him?"

On the one hand, I guess I should be pleased that I am getting strong reactions to my art. On the other hand, no, not like this :(

I find myself agreeing with the reactions. It's very hard to make the "poke" action feel consensual. Even a "tickle" is an invasion. I wanted to build something whimsical, but I didn't really consider the implications of the mechanic. No matter how cute or whimsical the design is, the poke negates all of this.

I feel a little more deflated than usual about this. With "Poke", it sometimes feels like I've accidentally added a bit more cruelty in the world, which was the exact opposite of my intention.