A Disorienting Display

Barley, a dog, looks up from under a card table on which an abstract 70s-coded puzzle is in the process of being assembled.

It’s probably safe to say that Barley would not have enjoyed this puzzle, had she any concept of its existence, given her limited ability to discriminate between hues. However, setting that hypothetical aside, I can report that she definitely did not appreciate it in practice either, because my parents and I would sit and stand around it, nearly still and mostly silent, in a manner that got her a little impatient. “Hey,” she would seem to be trying to say after a little while, “There are some perfectly good couches over there we could sit on together instead.”