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No.254 · Media

Glass Carousel

An endless row of portrait panels seen through a liquid glass lens; click the centred one and the rest fall away.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: White

Build an infinite horizontal carousel of 3:4 portrait panels in raw WebGL1 with two passes and no libraries. Pass one draws the visible panels (an image atlas, one textured quad per panel, positioned in pixels around the centre) into a framebuffer texture. Pass two is a full-screen lens shader over that texture: an ellipse centred on the screen, sized to hug the centred panel (half-height ≈ half the panel, half-width ≈ 0.66 of the panel width). Inside it the picture is bent tangentially near the rim (sin(2θ)·0.55 + sin(θ)·0.25 times 0.32 of the radius, ramping in from 58% of the radius), split into colour with 16 dispersion samples weighted red→green→blue, slightly darkened at the very centre, given a faint white bloom, a thin shimmering blue ring at the edge (#009dff, sin(12θ + 3.5t) shimmer) with a soft aura, and a crisp white rim line; the lens fades out over the last 7% of its radius. A single lensFx factor scales every effect. Motion: wheel, drag (1.6× on mouse) and flick with friction 0.865; the scroll chases its target with a 0.09 lerp, and 120ms after the last input it snaps to the nearest panel with a softer 0.05 lerp. Panels shrink up to 25% with scroll speed (fast attack, slow decay). Clicking a side panel centres it; clicking the centred one focuses it: it scales to 1.18, the lens fades away, and every other panel drops off the bottom, staggered by distance (60ms per step, quart-out). Escape or Close reverses it. On first view the panels rise from below in a random stagger, then grow from 80px tall to full height from the outside in while the lens blooms (expo in-out, 2.15s). A small "View" label (mix-blend exclusion) follows the cursor over panels, and the title above and a 01/08 counter below fade in after the intro. Panels default to generated canvas studies; pass your own images per item. Selected variant — White: theme="white": a pure white ground (#ffffff) with near-black title, counter and labels (#111).

Notes

Interaction
Scroll, drag or flick through the row; click a side panel to centre it, click the centred panel to focus it, and press Escape or Close to return. Arrow keys step when the carousel is focused.
Motion
Scroll lerp 0.09 / snap 0.05, friction 0.865; focus 0.9s with a 60ms drop stagger; intro rise 1s then grow 2.15s expo in-out; lens shimmer runs while visible and pauses offscreen.
Accessibility
Focusable region with aria-roledescription="carousel", instructions, arrow keys and Escape, and a polite live line that reads the current title and position. The canvas is aria-hidden; without WebGL it becomes a scroll-snapping list of images with titles. Reduced motion skips the intro, stops the shimmer and shortens every ease.
Responsive
Panel height is the smaller of 450px and 52% of the container, so it fits phones and short frames; the lens scales with the panel.
On touch
Touch drags with a gentler follow and a larger tap slop; there's no View label on touch.

Featured

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81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components