Remember children's colouring books filled with 'magic paint'? Grey pictures which, when brushed with water, turned to vivid hues?

Well, imagine the same idea but on a far bigger scale. Take one reasonable parched desert, copious amounts of powdered vegetable dyes, and assorted bits of industrial scale agricultural machinery.

Scatter the dried dyes in with the desert sand, to the design of your choice (mine would be a gigantic flower, probably a crocus) and wait for an orgy colours to expode with the first spots of rain.
-- Fishrat, Feb 28 2007

Namaqualand http://www.southafr...amaqua/e5_namaq.htm
Lt_Frank's flower power [Fishrat, Mar 01 2007]

Very nice image. I also like the temporality/futility aspect of it.

Do you think you could replace the vegetable dyes with fast-growing, fast-flowering plants? I imagine a beautiful picture (at a suitably large scale) formed by flowers of different colours. Becuse there is no natural rainfall, you could control the germination of the different seeds and therefore their flowering.
-- methinksnot, Feb 28 2007


Fun idea [methinks], although I'm afraid the gratification wouldn't be instant enough for me. It would look good if filmed by a time elapsed camera though. Through clever germination, I wonder if you could create movement effects, eg an eye blinking, or water beginning to flow from a tap?
-- Fishrat, Mar 01 2007



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