lauri paronen

about

generalist, writer, creative technologist
based in Tampere, Finland

BSc, Computer Science

Here you can find my coding projects, writing, and other creative work.
Scroll below to explore ( ˙▿˙ )

In Zen Buddhist symbolism, the enso is a circle that represents emptiness. A common practice involves drawing the enso, or rather letting it draw itself, in one breath. In a glance at the enso, a master can detect its creator's presence—or absence—of self.

The other half of the enso above is a laurel: the evergreen crown of triumph, but also a nod to Lauri, my given name. I like to entertain a belief in nominative determinism—that my name, derived from this ancient symbol of victory, suggests something about my destiny. But more than that, the enso, symbolizing emptiness and no-self, woven together with the laurel, a symbol of my identity, forms a quiet dialectic and personal reminder about being and non-being; of selfhood and its fundamental relativity. 📿

—Lauri

projects

one shot i ching

A web interface for the Book of Changes. Generates each reading based on truly random data from random.org.

recursive spiral squares

A p5.js sketch that visualizes recursion by drawing squares inside squares, creating an optical illusion as though the boundaries of the squares vanish into a spiral.

interactive sierpinski circles

This p5.js sketch explores recursive geometric structures using only circles. As you move the mouse across the x-axis (or click on different parts of the screen on mobile), the depth of the fractal (number of circles) increases. As the cursor is at the bottommost and rightmost extremes, the image formed is reminiscent of the Sierpinski triangle, only formed out of circles.

misc projects

My GitHub for miscellaneous projects and WIPs.

skills

JavaScript/TypeScript

React/Next.js

Node.js

Python

excellent natural language skills

creative coding with p5.js

For some years now, I have had an intermittent, overarching desire to verbalize ideas—specifically ones pertaining to mystical philosophy and ways of liberation. You can find my longer-form writing here, on my Substack.

Nous (νοῦς) is Greek for mind. This section contains an embed of my Cosmos page, a peer into my aesthetic and noetic sensibilities.

I sometimes tinker with sound. Below you can find my music on SoundCloud and Spotify. The visualizer button takes you to a page where you can find a colorful gradient audio visualizer. It initially plays a lofi beat of mine; but you can also visualize your own audio files ♪♪♪ ヽ(ˇ∀ˇ )ゞ

visualizer

This is my favorite song I've made so far. It's an atmospheric ambient track:

In 2022, OpenAI published DALL-E 2, a now-deprecated image generation model that could create images from text prompts. This was a very brief period of time when AI image generation wasn't slop yet—each image seemed pregnant with a promise of infinite possibility and creative freedom, and this potentiality fragranced each generation with a sense of aesthetic richness which compensated for the abundant visual inconsistencies and imperfections.

Brian Eno noted that "whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature." There is certainly no shortage of things to find ugly and nasty about AI image generation as a medium, and I am by no means a proponent of "AI art"; however I chose to include these generations of mine on this site as a little token of nostalgia, to celebrate the transience of this specific model. I shall always have a soft spot in my memory for it.