Color Redux

A run down of great links on color, what it is and how we see it as well as how other species perceive it, how our perception has changed historically, and what we could see in the future:

• Firstly, a fascinating Radiolab episode on color (that I have already begged the whole world to listen to): http://www.radiolab.org/2012/may/21/

• Secondly, two articles that borrow heavily from the Radiolab episode but goes on to address how naming colors impacts our ability to see them in more detail: here and here.

• Thirdly, a TED Talk by an artist who has never seen color but, thanks to a device he has created, can now hear it: here.

And I'll throw in some of my own posts to round things off:

RGB Colorspace Atlas by Tara Auerbach and Mantis Shrimp
http://artsravel.blogspot.com/2012/07/rgb-colorspace-atlas-and-mantis-shrimp.html
Making Color: about Victoria Finlay's history of color
http://artsravel.blogspot.com/2011/12/color.html
Celadon Talking Jars
http://artsravel.blogspot.com/2011/12/celadon-talking-jars.html
Black's historical uses
http://artsravel.blogspot.com/2011/12/back-to-black.html
based on ARTNews's article
http://www.artnews.com/2011/11/24/the-color-that-wasn%E2%80%99t-a-color/
The making of red, orange, and yellow
http://artsravel.blogspot.com/2011/12/red-orange-yellow.html

RGB Colorspace Atlas and Mantis Shrimp

RGB Colorspace Atlas, Volume 2 (2011)

As part of Ecstatic Alphabets, MoMA has a set Tauba Auerbach's colorful books on view. These three thick objects display every color the human eye can see in a three-dimensional, ordered way. The museum plaque probably describes the project best:

"Human eyes typically have three types of color receptors on their retinas, each sensitive to a different range of wavelengths of light. The colors associated with these wavelengths are approximately red, green, and blue. Because there are three types of color receptors, it is possible to map the visible spectrum in a three-dimensional spatial model by assigning red, green, and blue each to a dimension. It is then possible to outline a cube in this space, where the values of red, green, and blue are visible on a gradient scale of 0 - 100% in their respective dimensions. These gradients combine to create the RGB color space cube, a volume in which any color can be located by a set of three coordinates. RGB Colorspace Atlas, both a sculptural object and spatialization of color, consists of three books. Each volume contains the entire visible spectrum mapped out over 3,632 pages, representing the RGB cube sliced in a different direction: vertically, horizontally, and from front to back."

Of course, the volumes at MoMA were behind glass cases, so no one can flip through them. This video helps you imagine it though: 

Radiolab recently did a fascinating episode on color (bringing in Victoria Finlay, whose book I wrote about, as a guest). As the Auerbach blurb notes, human eyes typically have three types of color receptors (although a few women may have four through a quirk of genetics). However, some animals have many more--and thus see many more wavelengths, and colors, than we can imagine. The technicolor mantis shrimp has 16 kinds of color receptors. Can you imagine what the world looks like to it? Or, for that matter, what an attempt at spatial representation of its color spectrum would look like?

For more about woman with four kinds of color receptors, the discovery of color, whether color existed in the same way to Homer and the ancient Greeks, and much more, I highly recommend the Radiolab episode.

Death Masks

Sir Walter Scott

Death masks were wax or plaster molds applied post mortem to create a replication of the dead's face, and could then be reproduced further. Casts became popular to display or use as a model for a bust or portrait in the late Middle Ages. This practice was common until the end of the 19th Century. Some of the surviving masks are wonderfully expressive. While admittedly morbid, there's something touching and honest about the surviving portraits. They would have served as accurate reminders in the age before photography, perhaps less flattering than portraits but seemingly immediate.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

William Wordsworth

Dion Boucicault

 

Isaac Newton

All these images came from this online archive of Princeton's. Even more can be found here at this Paris shop still in existence today. For a brief audio exploration of death masks, check out Radiolab's podcast here and learn where the face of the CPR dummy came from.