Typographic Flock Murmuration
Interaction, code, code poemEmily Dickinson called hope the thing with feathers. In this piece, the words themselves become that thing. Typographic Murmuration is a code poem built around Dickinson's "Hope is the Thing with Feathers," in which the text of the poem behaves as a murmuration of starlings: at rest, the letters settle into legible lines; disturbed, they scatter and wheel through the screen in loose, flocking formation, governed by the same emergent behavioral rules that send thousands of birds wheeling across an autumn sky as a single body.
The mouse is the predator. Move it through the text and the letters flee, dispersing in every direction before gradually finding their way back to one another, reforming into words, into lines, into a poem about a bird. Stillness returns them to sense.
To interact: move your cursor (or finger, on touch-screens) through the text to send the letters into flight. Hold still and watch them return. The poem reassembles itself.
+ Concept / Design: Olivia Verdugo
+ Code Assistants: ChatGPT + Claude
"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity -
It asked a crumb - of me.
Hope is the Thing with Feathers, by Emily Dickinson
© 2026 Olivia S Verdugo