Design Process

When I was brainstorming for this project, I quickly decided to create something that explores psychedelia. Having lived in the Bay Area, California as an artist for five years, I had many opportunities to learn about psychedelic art, music, and meet people who are very experienced with trips and substances. Movement or illusion of movement is key to psechedelic visual art which usually also utilizes vibrant over-saturated colors. Combined with my recent stress from school and life, I decided to create this image of many faces rotating. The faces would change into red and rotate in a uniform motion when mouseX is larger than 300. Here is the code to my sketch

Reflection

Animating this simple face in p5.js might be the best way to achieve my original goal. In p5.js, the faces are perfectly repetitive with the exact same distance between each other. The rotating movement also takes this concept to the next level, creating this overwhelming dizzy effect that is slightly uncomfortable and resonates with my recent mental state. Traditionally, the simple yellow face (usually smiley) is often used as an emoji and rarely appears in highly repetitive forms. Utilizing this pattern to create optical illusion gives it another layer of discomfort and anxiety that would have been absent if this pattern appears singularly by itself.