What stays after you look away
What happens
Your eyes see colour in opposing pairs: blue against yellow, red against green. Stare at one side of a pair and those cells tire. When the picture goes grey, the tired side falls behind, and the opposite colour wins. The grey picture looks painted.Retinal cone adaptation and opponent processing. Fifteen seconds of inverted chroma at fixed luminance desensitises the responsible cones. On the switch to the greyscale plate, the imbalance reads as the complement of what was fixated: the original image. The plates share their luminance so the fixation holds on structure, and the stared-at chroma is boosted 1.45× to strengthen it.
If it didn't work
Your eyes probably moved. Even a small glance washes it out, so try again and keep to the dot. It's stronger in a dim room, and a large screen helps.
Why this is here
The site is called aftermind: what stays with you after you look away. It seemed right that one thing on it should actually do that. The background is #16161D, eigengrau, the grey your eyes report in complete darkness, so the page is already the colour of nothing.
