Stephanie’s Story: a research visit to the ESRF (Part 3)

Part I: Learning to Jump Although I had been introduced to Stephanie Burg several times during the early stages of my residency, the circumstances of our meetings were always such that we didn’t exchange many words; and her natural shyness precluded the kind of conversation that leads to a significantly better knowledge of a person. It […]

I want to look inside your head …

The term virtual reality was coined by Jaron Lanier, the founder of VPL Research, one of the pioneer companies dedicated to the development of hardware and software for VR systems. The designation is, from any viewpoint, a contradiction in terms. Notwithstanding the philosophical acceptance of different views about the ontological meaning of reality, from a day-to-day experience, […]

‘I see …’ a research visit to the ESRF (Part 2)

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding. Isaac Newton It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and […]

Chromatic aberration, working through colour models, and coming to terms with epiphenomena

If one says ‘Red’ (the name of a colour) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different. Josef Albers The Interaction of Colour (1963) This is a rather complex post but I hope […]

To Discover and Understand: a research visit to the ESRF (Part I)

When viewed from the imposing ramparts of Fort de la Bastille, from a great height and at a distance of about 2 km, The European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF)* in Grenoble seems tiny. With one eye closed it can be easily viewed through the space encircled by a curled index finger and thumb. As I […]

The Colour Out of Space (introducing sound to vision)

Gilman’s dreams consisted largely in plunges through limitless abysses of inexplicably coloured twilight and bafflingly disordered sound; abysses whose material and gravitational properties, and whose relation to his own entity he could not begin to explain. From The Dreams in the Witch House by HP Lovecraft Imagine a space with no sound at all, not […]

The Bluest Blue (part I)

Blue is the colour between violet and green on the optical spectrum of visible light. Human eyes perceive blue when observing light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometres. Blues with a higher frequency, and thus a shorter wavelength, gradually appear more violet, while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength gradually appear more green. Pure blue, in the middle, has a wavelength of 470 nanometers. In painting […]

Homage to the Sphere (Part II)

Further progress has been made in the development of our Homage to the Sphere virtual reality environment. There will now be 6-8 objects populating the sphere. Here is my current thinking on these – although I’m still thinking about some of the objects. Firstly, these objects will be really simple in form … and that tiny versions will […]

Homage to the Sphere (Part I)

Just what is it, this thing we call ‘colour’? The aim of this residency is to produce a series of artworks that will explore and investigate the many different ways in which we perceive and understand colour. As might be expected, there will be a series of vibrantly coloured paintings made with pigments – compounds that selectively […]

Harnessing Structural Darkness: The Blackest Black …

“Colour itself is a degree of darkness.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The blackest black, the whitest white, the bluest blue, the reddest red, all trip off the tongue quite easily. Any of these superlatives might summon up an abstract image of such a colour, perhaps derived from some form of synesthesia – an occurrence […]

structuralcolour.org

art and the nature of colour