---
id: "2113165884605001792"
source: https://x.com/buildwithsid/status/2113165884605001792
author: "siddharth (@buildwithsid)"
media: "photo, 1780x1200"
model: claude-opus-5-5
generated: 2026-10-22
---
# Black Hole Drawn in Running Text

## Summary
Four variations of one effect: a page of paragraph text bends around a black hole, so the letters themselves draw the event horizon, the photon ring and a lensed accretion disk. Shown face on in white on black, as ink on paper, in hot pink with more mass, and with your own text; a striking way to turn typography into an image.

## Style
- Theme: mixed (dark, paper and pink variants)
- Mood: cosmic, literary, experimental, precise
- Tags: ascii-art, text-rendering, black-hole, gravitational-lensing, generative, monospace, variations
- Category: Typography, Art

## Palette
| Role | Hex |
|---|---|
| Space black | #121318 |
| Charcoal | #252423 |
| Graphite | #373637 |
| Paper | #E4E4E2 |
| Hot pink | #D3367C |
| Mauve | #654C5A |
| Caption white | #F2F2F2 |

## Typography
- Body text forming the image: small monospaced font, about 1% of panel height, regular. JetBrains Mono or IBM Plex Mono (400).
- Captions under each variant: sans, bold label followed by regular text ("Face on.", "Paper."). Inter (700 and 400).
- A tiny keyboard key chip inside a caption ("Press 3").

## Layout
- 1780x1200 frame split into a 2x2 grid of panels with thin dark borders on a near-black page.
- Each panel: a 16:10 render on top and a one-line caption below.
- In each render the black hole sits centred, with the text block filling the frame edge to edge.

## Elements
- Event horizon: an empty dark disc where no letters are drawn.
- Photon ring: a thin bright ring of densely packed characters just outside the shadow.
- Accretion disk: denser, brighter glyphs arranged in an ellipse that wraps over and under the hole.
- Background text: continuous paragraphs that thin out and bend near the hole.
- A few single pink glyphs as highlights in the dark variants.

## Motion
- Still comparison sheet; the live piece lets you change mass, view angle and colour, and the text re-flows around the hole in real time.

## Rebuild it
1. Lay the text out in a monospaced character grid on a canvas.
2. For each cell, compute a deflection from a simple lensing model (bend angle proportional to mass over distance from the centre) and sample the source text at the deflected position.
3. Skip cells inside the shadow radius; brighten and thicken cells near the photon ring.
4. Overlay a tilted ellipse for the disk by sampling a second, denser text layer within it.
5. Provide themes (white on black, ink on off-white, black on hot pink) and a mass slider.

## Generation prompt
A black hole rendered entirely from small monospaced text: paragraphs of letters bend around an empty dark circle, forming a bright photon ring and a lensed elliptical accretion disk out of dense characters; shown as a 2x2 sheet of variants (white on black, ink on off-white paper, black on hot pink, grey on black) with short captions; precise, literary, generative art.