Nadir

Built to one reference and fitted to it pixel by pixel. A hard white thread drops through dark smoke and flares into a bell just above a panel. It spreads along the panel's top edge as a thin white sheet, then runs over the near corner and falls down that side as a widening film, fringed cyan and then pink. The smoke takes the light: cyan-blue on the open side of the thread, violet on the corner side, pure blue past the corner. The far side only glows faintly, through a fine dot screen.

The thread, the bell and the sheet are one flow: a jet meeting a wall. Near the surface its streamlines turn and run along the edge, so the flare's outline is a streamline rather than a drawn curve. Drops of light ride the same flow. They fall at a steady speed, stall and flatten into the bell, then run out along the edge faster and faster. The smoke drifts up and dust drifts down through the light. With reduced motion you get the still frame, which is the reference with no drops in it.

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