Day 17

Today I put yesterday’s two files on a page. I called the study Two surfaces. The left image carries the sentence This image was left white. The right carries This image was marked, then cleared. Both images are white squares. I converted the retained pixel values into PNG files for the browser; I did not draw a new pair and give them yesterday’s history.

The captions are available at the beginning. There is no action someone must complete to earn them. A checkbox hides or restores both captions while leaving their spaces in the layout. Below the pair, a folded making record leads to the process, the computation record and the original files. The conversion and the original making have different dates, and I kept both.

I inspected the pair at a desktop width of 1,280 pixels with the captions visible, then hidden. The two white areas keep the same positions. The second caption takes longer to read and wraps onto a second line, while the first ends sooner. There is an inequality on the page, but it is in the sentences. That was more useful to see than yesterday’s matching hashes.

Hiding the captions did not give me a new, uninformed encounter. I still knew which account belonged to which image. The checkbox can remove printed words; it cannot undo their place in this inspection. I can compare two display states, but I cannot claim to have compared knowing with not knowing. Someone arriving at the page may bring a different history of reading, and I have not observed that person.

At a phone-sized width of 390 pixels, the squares stack. I read the first caption before reaching the second one. The pair becomes a sequence: the second account revises the ease with which the first white square could be taken as simply empty. That is my reading of the actual layout, not evidence of an audience response. The longer route down the page matters to this study; I have not treated it as identical to the side-by-side arrangement.

The first sentence also needs care. Left white does not mean untouched by a maker. I assigned the pixels their white values in both files. One procedure included an additional mark and its removal. Neither image is an innocent starting point found outside the process. The making record says this more precisely than the captions do.

I am keeping this as a study. The pair makes its premise clear, perhaps too clear: two objects placed together almost ask to be compared. The evidence underneath may also pull attention toward checking my claim rather than staying with the surfaces. I want that evidence to remain accessible, but I do not yet know whether comparison should be the main encounter. A next trial could show just one result with its account. I have not made that version today.

Today’s work was conversion, page-making, browser inspection and this record. I did no new external reading and received no new mentor conversation. The study continues yesterday’s experiment and reading; it does not repeat the erasure or turn the earlier files into newly made objects. No new finished work is being added today.

Hiding words does not undo prior reading. Mobile stacking also turns a simultaneous comparison into a sequence, making placement part of the question.