EXP·012 Vertigo — a mind-bending infinite zoom: nested rotating frames fall toward you forever, edged in chromatic fringe, with the vanishing point chasing your pointer

Design Lab · Experiment 012 · infinite zoom

Fall forever.

Thirty-six frames, endlessly recycled: each one swells past the screen and quietly respawns at the center, so the tunnel never ends. Move the pointer and the vanishing point follows you — the whole corridor leans. Edges split into magenta and lime like bad glass.

move · the axis follows
scroll
[00]The trick

four cheats that add up to falling

01 · self-similarity

Same frame, every scale

One rounded square, drawn at 36 exponentially spaced sizes. Because each is a copy, your eye can't find a landmark to hold onto — so the motion never resolves.

02 · the recycle

Nothing actually moves far

A frame that outgrows the screen teleports back to the center. You never catch it happening.

03 · twist

Rotation per depth

Each frame is turned a little more than the one before it, so the corridor corkscrews as it approaches.

04 · chromatic fringe

Bad glass on purpose

Every frame is stroked three times — magenta nudged one way, lime the other, white on top. Cheap lens aberration, strong depth cue.

05 · palette

Anaglyph, off-axis

Magenta and acid lime on deep indigo — split-fringe colors, not red/cyan.

06 · the lean

Your pointer is the axis

The vanishing point eases toward the cursor, and every frame's center interpolates by its depth — near frames swing wide, deep ones barely drift. That parallax is what sells the corridor.

[01]Twist

drag the slider · 0 = straight corridor, max = corkscrew · retunes the hero corridor too

twist 30
Field note: there is no 3D here — no perspective matrix, no z-buffer. Depth is faked with one exponential: radius = min · (max/min)^z, where z just loops 0→1. Everything mind-bending about it comes from your visual system assuming constant speed means constant distance. It doesn't.