Here the site gets to try things out.
Here I try out ideas in image and movement. Some are about attention, worry and feelings. Others begin with a tree, a tiger or a starry sky.
Some experiments become part of the rest of the site. Others get to stay here.
You are welcome to try them. After an experiment, you can leave anonymous feedback using fixed response options. No name, email address or free text is requested.
- Active
- Finished and in use elsewhere on the site. Labbet keeps the original.
- Stable
- Finished and working as intended. May be reused in the site’s visual language.
- In progress
- Ready to try, but the idea or execution is still being developed.
- Archived
- No longer being developed, but kept as a trace of the process.
- Coming up
- Planned, but not yet built or ready to try.
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The Nebula
The site’s background, built anew. The old version calculated particle paths on the computer’s processor and could manage five thousand; this one calculates them on the graphics card and can manage a hundred thousand. The same idea, but the systems have room to become large and faint rather than small and distinct.
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The River
The ink gathers into a form, holds it for a while and dissolves. Then another. The forms are the site’s own images: the platform, the mountain, the torch. They are never quite the same twice. Slowly, but not still.
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The Ink
Ink in water. A flow field draws the colour through the paper: it threads, folds and dissolves, never the same way twice. Three modes of the same movement: ink spreading, a cloud hanging over, smoke rising from something unseen. Nothing stands still here, and the mind is not frozen either.
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Anxiety in Orbit
An interactive map of three categories used in ISTDP to observe how anxiety can be expressed in striated muscle, in smooth muscle or through cognitive and perceptual changes. Drag to rotate and choose a category to read more. The map draws on material from ISTDP Hungary and is a simplified illustration. It does not replace medical assessment.
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The Listener
A planned sound experiment using the Attention Training Technique, ATT, an attention exercise within MCT. Several sounds are used in three stages: selective attention, rapid switching and divided attention. The aim is to practise attentional flexibility, not to push thoughts or feelings away. The experiment will be built when the sound material is ready and the content has been clinically calibrated.
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The Cocktail Party
A planned sound experiment with several sounds playing at once. The idea is to be able to choose one sound source and let the rest fade into the background. A precursor to The Listener.
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Superposition
An image of how the same experience can hold several possible interpretations. Here is the example: ‘My chest is tightening.’ Move your pointer or finger towards the body, the feeling, the thought or the relationship. One interpretation comes forward in the image while the others remain. Move the pointer away or lift your finger to let go. If you linger, the words drift back after a while. What happens if understanding is allowed to stay open for a moment?
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The Chain
A message has not received a reply. Hold your pointer or finger over the sentence and see how one interpretation leads to the next. Move the pointer away or lift your finger and the chain dissolves. The image makes visible the difference between what has happened and what we imagine. We do not yet know why the reply is taking time.
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Entanglement
Two points, a mirrored movement. Click or tap an empty space to create a pair of particles. Drag one and see the other mirror it. Click or tap a particle to break the connection. Then the particles fade away.
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The Triangle
Three corners: feelings, anxiety and defences. Click or tap a corner and follow the marker between them. In ISTDP, the triangle of conflict is used to explore how they relate. In the animation, the path from defences to the feelings corner passes through the anxiety corner. The meter shows the time spent at the corner. In therapy, the work is adapted to the person and to what happens in the session.
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Tunnelling
Particles and feeling words meet a wall of ink. Move your pointer or finger towards the wall and a passage opens. On the other side, the words become clearer. The wall is a metaphor for defences and what can be difficult to get in touch with. The pressure and passages belong to the animation, not to any measurement of your feelings.
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The Observer
A thought appears: ‘What if …’ Hold your pointer or finger over it and see more words grow. Move your focus and the additions dissolve while the thought remains. The experiment is inspired by MCT and explores the difference between noticing a thought and continuing to reason about it.
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Clinical metaphors
Six clinical metaphors – the platform, the sky, the oscilloscope, the beach ball, the mountain, the torch – visualised in three image treatments: original, warm and ink. An attempt to let the feeling speak directly, without words.
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Frequency Bands
Three exercises with one motif at a time. Explore the wave’s colour, depth and movement, the stream’s points and pace, or the rings’ overlap. Direct your attention towards one quality, shift to another and try noticing them together.
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Ink in Paper
An early background study. Soft patches of ink drift across a light surface, grow and recede. The experiment remains as a trace of the site’s first visual language.
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Breathing Loader
The words search, slow down and find their colour. The spacing between letters changes, and a faint line of text shimmers beneath the heading. A study in how text can move. The sequence starts again every thirty seconds.
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Fragment / Signal
Donwood fragments drifting freely. Every fourth breathing cycle, the lines briefly organise themselves into a signal wave, then dissolve again. A red point travels along a line once and disappears.
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The Platform
Thoughts as trains. The platform is consciousness. The brain is never still – trains come and go, day and night, on several tracks at once. You do not have to get on.
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Cosmic Map
An inverted map of space that lives across the site. Dark particles against a light background move through gravitational attractors. Individual particles bloom into supernovas and disappear. Graduated: the constellation idea now lives on as the site map in the homepage’s finale.
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The Crack 2.0
The line opens and closes again. Move your pointer or finger along it to influence the opening. When it closes, a coloured trace remains for a while. With reduced motion, a still image is shown.
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Membrane
Move your pointer or finger across the surface. The lines give way and spring back. Blue emerges in the movement and fades as the surface settles. With reduced motion, a still grid is shown.
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The Breath 2.0
A ring shows four seconds in, two on pause, four out and two at rest. The background pattern follows the same rhythm. Follow it if it feels comfortable, or simply look at the image. With reduced motion, a still image is shown.
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Noise Channel
Numbers and symbols fall slowly through the image. Some pause, others suddenly gather speed. Like the background noise of thought.
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Field Lines
Magnetic field lines around an invisible centre that moves extremely slowly. Teal near the centre, ink further away. What you are always drawn back to.
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Topography
A map that slowly changes. The contour lines shift, the mountains wander and the valleys fill. An inner landscape to move through.
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Interference
Place two wave sources with a click or tap. A pattern of light and dark bands grows between them. Drag the sources to new positions and see the whole image change.
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Cloud of Dust
Small grains float through a light space. Some are close and distinct, others almost invisible. The whole cloud drifts slowly onward. What flows past without being grasped.
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The Weight of a Word
Words pass, even as you watch them. Click or tap a word and a chain begins to grow. The words gain weight and sink. After a while with nothing new grasped, the links come loose. An image of the difference between noticing a thought and holding on to it.
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The Echo Chamber
Rings widen from the centre and fade, like echoes in a large room. When they have faded away, the movement begins again.
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Sediment
Layers build up from below, with uneven edges and small shifts in colour. A landscape takes shape, a little at a time. When the image is full, it starts again.
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Gravity Well
Hold your pointer or finger still and see the lines bend around the point. When you move, the hollow remains and slowly subsides. Here rumination takes visual form: something we return to and can feel drawn into. Rumination has gravity. With reduced motion, the image is still.
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The Cathedral Room
Vertical lines of light bounce between the walls and take a long time to fade. The room is never entirely silent – something is always dying away. The therapeutic room.
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Frost Patterns
Thin branches grow from a point, like frost on glass. Eventually, the image fades and a new pattern begins to take shape.
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Seismograph
A trace grows from left to right. Move your pointer or finger across the image and the line becomes more restless. Pause for a while and see the smaller shifts emerge. Sometimes there is a faint double beat, sometimes a larger deflection. The image also has a movement of its own. With reduced motion, a finished, still trace is shown.
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Experiments to come
The next thing will land here. Perhaps a cursor that thinks, perhaps a sound that follows the scrolling, perhaps something else entirely. Do say what you would like to see.