When Eyes Close, Colors Change Seats

The image has no background; four colors together fill the viewport. Their identities lie not only in their color values, but also in which segment of the screen edge each possesses, and with whom each shares a long boundary. The uneven contact bands between different colors describe only the seating relation of this moment: they slowly expand and contract, but do not preserve the seating order that has already disappeared.

Hold down on the image or press the spacebar, and the work goes completely dark. The darkness is not a preview of a transition, but the only vacancy through which exchange can take place. One color leaves its seat first; the remaining colors fill the adjacent edges in sequence; finally, the color that was carried away returns from a new screen edge. The longer you hold, the deeper the migration settled in darkness becomes; you can compare before and after, but you cannot possess the moving process at the same time.

After release, only the last returning color will briefly overshoot its new seat, then retreat back to the boundary. The other exchanges have already been completed while invisible, and will not reenact themselves in order to prove that they occurred. Press R to return to the initial seating order determined by the seed, and press S to save the current still frame.

If change is allowed to occur only when watching is withdrawn, then what is seen again: a result, or an unverifiable act of trust?