Beware the Evil Eye

I am fascinated by the concept of the evil eye in ancient cultures. It is a curse brought on by the envious gaze of others.  Bad things befall those who are cursed by the evil eye. It is unusual as curses go because it can actually be put on someone unintentionally, by staring too long at someone, usually a child or a woman.

My Evil Eye Processing sketch is informed and inspired by these ideas. The eye turns evil when you move your mouse to the right, i.e. it is looking at you “the wrong way,” or maybe just turning evil unintentionally. When you click while the eye is evil, a laser beam shoots out at your mouse. I put in the laser beam just to be a cute visual representation of harm done, but according to Wikipedia, I’ve unintentionally referenced Plutarch: “Plutarch’s scientific explanation stated that the eyes were the chief, if not sole, source of the deadly rays that were supposed to spring up like poisoned darts from the inner recesses of a person possessing the evil eye.”

Here is the code:

[code lang="java"]int irisX = 475;
int irisY = 245;

void setup()
{
  size(950, 500);
}

void draw()
{
  smooth();
  background(178, 255, 253);

  //eye shape
  fill(255);
  stroke(255, 159, 85);
  arc(475, 200, 500, 350, PI/12, 11*PI/12);
  arc(475, 290, 500, 350, 13*PI/12, 23*PI/12);
  //iris
  noStroke();
  fill(63, 121, 178);
  ellipse(irisX, irisY, 210, 210);
  //pupil
  fill(0);
  ellipse(irisX, irisY, 100, 100);

  fill(255, 128, 0);
  textSize(100);
  text("eye", 400, 450);

  if(mouseX  475)  //evil eye setup
  {
    background(40);
    stroke(255, 0, 0);
    for(int i=0; i= 579)  //prevents iris from leaving eye area on right
      irisX = 579;
    else
    {
      irisX = mouseX;
    }

    fill(224, 255, 0);
    stroke(255, 159, 85);
    arc(475, 200, 500, 350, PI/12, 11*PI/12);
    arc(475, 290, 500, 350, 13*PI/12, 23*PI/12);

    fill(255, 128, 0);
    textSize(100);
    text("EVIL", 380, 100);
    text("eye", 400, 450);

    noStroke();
    fill(255, 41, 3);
    ellipse(irisX, irisY, 210, 210);
    fill(0);
    ellipse(irisX, irisY, 70, 208);

    if(mousePressed == true)  //laser beam
    {
      stroke(58, 255, 0, 150);
      strokeWeight(7);
      line(irisX, irisY, mouseX, mouseY);
      ellipse(mouseX, mouseY, 5, 5);
      strokeWeight(1);
    }
  }
}[/code]