Steganography

By Peter Halstead

Pictures lie
Behind the eye,
Right below
Our noses:
Sub rosas
Like the air –
Always there,
The retina’s blind mix
Of dazzling acrostics.

February 9th & 10th, 2026, Magnolia

Explanation

Steganography is the practice, similar to encryption, of coding one pattern inside another, as the eye creates opposing color images of what the brain sees. We can see up to ten million colors, while a computer screen displays 16.8 million colors, so that certain patterns escape our eagle eyes. As colors are created by combinations of light, the number of colors is scientifically infinite: colors are just reactions to our surroundings. Colors themselves aren’t actual colors, but wavelengths which the eye interprets as colors. The eye also interprets an image in its opposing colors, its so-called complementary colors, as Goethe codified in his color theory.