Velvet Garden: Color Circuit

About Velvet Garden: Color Circuit

Deep in a library of living stained glass there is a darkroom where the sun is kept in a drawer. Six kinds of glass negative lie in the printing frame in six colours and six card mounts, each with a pressed plant printed across it in black: a ginkgo leaf, a fern, a poppy, an oak leaf, a dandelion clock and an ear of wheat. Swap two neighbours to line up three or more and they burst into light.

A frame is printed in short rounds, and every round leaves its mark. Where you played, the paper turns the deep blue of a cyanotype, with a white fern showing on it; in the next round every tile cleared on that paper scores more, and more again where it was inked twice. A whole group cleared on paper that is already blue is a double exposure, worth 120 points more. Beside the frame the circuit asks for colours in a fixed order; close it as often as the frame asks to win.

When a round ends the ultraviolet lamp swings on over the frame, and a print of the ink that round left is pegged to the drying line over the panel. The line grows into the pattern your rounds have made, one print after another.

Twelve frames are drawn by hand, from the first exposure to the great print: a ginkgo leaf, a poppy head, an arch window, a wheat field, a double exposure. The music is a slow, hypnotic tune on vibraphone and pad, the sounds are glass, water and a ticking clock, and every frame has been solved by a computer player first, so a way to win always exists.

Your stars, bests and badges stay in this browser, and nothing is uploaded.