RGB

The letters “RGB” refer, of course, to red, green, and blue, the colors that make up the colors on your computer screen or digital image file. Each R, G, and B can be represented by three numbers, each from zero to two-hundred and fifty-five. Combine them and you get millions of color possibilities (256 times 256 times 256). 

In RGB I just write out those color sequences based on a series of photographs, for example “(231,23,154) (199,101,98).” For added fun each sequence in written in the very color that the numbers indicate. I wrote a computer program to do all the hard work.

It’s impossible for a human to “see” the image plainly displayed in numerical form. A computer would have no trouble at all and maybe someday some intern will be tasked with the thankless job of typing in all these codes to see what the hidden pictures are. Or, more likely, someone will scan these and have a computer identify the numbers automatically and convert them into a regular image. 

When you look at the RGB images as they are, however, you see something visually interesting that a computer, even a thinking one, might miss. Pick one of the pages where the numbers are printed very small and you will note washes of color behind the numbers. Reds, blues, greens, purples, yellows. It looks like there is a color in the background behind the numbers but there is not. It’s just white paper, some pointillism-like optical blending occurring in the human eye. Zoom in and the effect vanishes.