Phantoms (eeedg)

What does the word 'phantom' suggest to you? Probably a white figure, perhaps draped, masked or otherwise obscured. Yet no genuine photograph of a phantom has ever been taken, and most of us cannot point to any particular origin of these characteristics. Thus `phantom' is an emergent concept, a product of culture. If we accept that some observers have seen phantoms, in their mind's eye or otherwise, then somewhere in the space of possibilities lay true pictures of phantoms. This series is an attempt to explore those possibilities.

Each Phantom is a fully-periodic 6s film, generated from scratch in p5.js. Some phantoms can be seen returning to the void from whence they came; others struggle to stay in the human domain. Most are rendered naturalistically; others appear as they might in a dream, a nightmare, or a psychedelic hallucination.

What pattern of arcs suggests an eye? What bending of lines suggests an elbow? Are phantoms in the world, or in our mind?