Self as System / Build v2
Move your cursor slowly to build a curling drawing. Move quickly to make it dissolve.
LIVE SYSTEM — RESPONDS TO CURSOR
The strongest rule from v1 was the curve-drawing behavior — slow, deliberate cursor movement producing soft curling lines and circular nodes felt immediately legible and matched the tone I wanted. The weakest part was the geometric shatter effect at high speed: I noted in my v1 End of Build Reflection that it had no real limit, and could clutter the canvas with fragments the longer someone moved quickly. For v2, I'm removing the shatter behavior entirely and tightening the one remaining rule instead — specifically the threshold between "slow" and "fast" movement, so the shift between building a curve and losing it feels like a clean, controlled state change rather than two competing effects. My question going into this build is how much character a single rule can carry once it no longer has a second, contrasting behavior to lean on.
What changed from v1? The geometric shatter behavior is gone entirely. The system now has one rule instead of two: cursor speed controls whether the drawing is building (slow) or dissolving (fast), using the same fade mechanism that was already part of v1, just tuned to run much faster above the threshold.
What became clearer once you tightened the system? With only one behavior left, the relationship between speed and outcome is much easier to read immediately — there's no longer a question of which of two effects is happening, just a single, continuous state.
What did you remove, and why did that improve meaning? I removed the shard/shatter effect, which I had already identified as the noisiest, least controlled part of v1. Removing it forced the remaining curve rule to carry the whole piece, and made the "reward patience, punish carelessness" idea land more cleanly, since there's now only one outcome to lose, not a second competing spectacle.
What will you attempt in v3? I want to take the optional creative reach and rebuild this one surviving rule — the curve that builds and dissolves — in Three.js, so the drawing exists in 3D space instead of on a flat canvas, without adding any new rules alongside it.