Painting The Tape
The patterns are produced from actual bid and offer data in stock symbol CAE. The selection of scale and colors creates the appearance of paint brushes touching up two surfaces. The paint brushes are formed from exchange quotes while the the surfaces are formed from the National Best Bid (green line) and Offer (red line) in this stock. The expression "Painting the Tape" refers to the illegal practice of creating fictitious activity or interest in a stock, which describes what is going on in this chart: 73,245 meaningless bids and offers were blasted out over 47 seconds for this one stock.