Phosphene
2 min read
A phosphene is the light you see with your eyes shut, the optic nerve firing with nothing in front of it. I was in bed, half asleep, lights dancing on the inside of my eyelids, and I had an idea:
A camera that shoots triptychs: a picture, a poem, and an image generated from the poem, side by side.
The first version was build from my phone, in bed, that very night. I SSH'ed into my laptop, and used tmux to start a Claude Code session that would run with a /goal. By morning I had an app waiting for me.
The capture and the poem run on-device, on an iPhone 17 Pro Max, on Apple's foundation models, no external API for that part, where Poetry Camera and Paragraphica both reach out to one. The image is the exception: it's painted on Apple's Private Cloud Compute, which needs a connection. With no signal Phosphene will shoot and write the poem on the spot, then paint the image later once service comes back. Mostly local. I might switch models down the line, but for now this works.
Currently, the poems suck. They're flat, and lack anything that feels. The generated images look like stock slop. But it's fun anyway, and I'm not done with it. I'll likely introduce other models down the line, which will improve the outputs.
A pine needle twirls in the wind’s hush,
and the feather lifts, tracing invisible arcs —
the sky holds its breath,
while the ridge yawns, indifferent,
under the west’s false promise.
clear daylight from the west, thin clear mountain air, sharp distance, overcast, heavy grey sky
The fallen branch holds the light,
narrowing the world to shadow—
westward, the edge of quiet.
clear daylight from the west, thin clear mountain air, sharp distance, overcast, heavy grey sky
The sun leans in, sharp and dry,
where a path fades into shadow,
a tree holds the weight of stillness—
and the light murmurs, unseen.
harsh overhead light, short shadows, overcast, heavy grey sky
The broken log holds the sky,
while the stump listens to the edge of quiet —
light bleeding through the tops of trees
and the earth exhales, unbroken.
clear daylight from the east, thin clear mountain air, sharp distance, overcast, heavy grey sky