Visual Culture #8 - Colour

Aristotle studied light, colour and secondary colours and also how they linked to status. Da Vinci also looked at colour (see later on in this post for more detail). Baroque used chiaroscuro (dramatic shadows). Issac Newton looked at white light through a prism and came up with the hue circle. Goethe came up with the 'theory of colours' and physiological colours (the effects of colours). The lecturer then mentioned dioptrical colours but didn't say what they were and can't seem to find it online, I'll have to ask the lecturer about this. Josef Albers looked at the bauhaus and it's relation to colour. According to Albers, colour is deceiving, and we perceive it in relation to our surroundings.

https://filmutopiablog.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/a56af35026076d0afac79ab477827149-444x249x19.gif

A few other theorists that might be handy;

• Schopenhouer and Colour (1816). 
• Newton vs. Goethe (wiki). 
• Wiltgenstein - 'Remarks on Colour' (1950).

Colour in Film

This part will be mostly in note form as it was just the lecturer spit balling different filmmakers and each colour's meanings. 

Hand colouring with Edison's 'Dance Serpentine'. Barbara Flueckiger. Melies. Spellbound - Hitchcock. Hand tinted scene. Colour as a change of narrative; The Virgin Suicides. Change from black and white to colour; Schindlers List.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ab/1d/97/ab1d978332fa0caefcbf29c3a11ba9fb.gif

• Red - blood, passion
• Yellow- sun, happiness, gold, deception warning
• Blue - heavenly, exotic, gender, social media, chaos (Ancient Greece)
• Green - fertility, nature, jealousy, poison, money
• Orange - amusements, energy, fire

(we seemed to ignore quite a few colours)

Complementary colours are on the opposite of the colour wheel. Analogous colours sit next to each other. Triadic colours are 3 colours arranged evenly spaces around the colour wheel. Tedratic colours are 4 colours in complementary pairs. 

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In Tuesday's lecture, we looked at colour and spatial theory. A few of these notes don't make sense as I believe we looked a bit too deep into it, with colour being multi-dimensional. I've also put something about 'map of the new art' which is art without borders and new horizons.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/796552b8f50d47675a639bd492e0046e/tumblr_mju2ozL3Id1s8dzsqo4_250.gif

Spatial theory is the study of space and place, this can be material objects, geography, and the environment. Space is a physical setting, where as place is an outcome of social processes. The spatial turn - space not static. Background action shapes ideas???? (notes don't make any sense)

Colour alters perception. Colour theory is still in it's infancy; computers can detect 16 million colours, we can detect 10 million, but there is only 11 basic colour terms.

• Aristotle came up with the theory of white and black being principal colours. Yellow and blue are secondary. 
• Alberti said there was 4 true colours, but more can be created from them. White and black are alterations of other colours.
• Issac Newton came up with the colour spectrum. White light was released into a prism and the output was a range of colours. There's 7 different segments.
• Goethe, Chevreul and many others said that there are 3 primary colours and secondary colours can be mixed from them.
• Scientists in the 19th century came up with RGB primary colours. 
• 20th century chemists came up with the 3rd colour model CMY. To lower ink costs, they came up with a 4th, CMYK. 
• Itten came up with colour combinations and hues.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Prisma-goethe.gif

There is primary, secondary and tertiary (3 colours mixed) colours. Then there is addative (RGB) and subtractive (reflects light) colours. Addative synthesis is mixing colours of light. [insert some eye diagrams here and some sciency stuff]

Hue is a synonym of colour. Tint is to go lighter and add white. Shade is to go darker and add black. Tone is dull/bright variants and adding grey. There are also aggressive 'warm' colours and passive 'cool' colours. The value is how light or dark a colour is. The colour wheel is the order of the spectrum and the relationship between them is very important. Complementary colours are opposite each other and contrast. Analogous are 3 adjacent colours. 

At this point in the lecture, I couldn't take it seriously with the lecturer repeatingly saying orange (orangy orange).