Le Grace

Brainstorm: Value

1. Art and design often explore relationships between humans and non-humans, the environment and ecology. How can contemporary art and design propose new possibilities for imagining the ‘human’ and the environment? 

Assessment task one explored the ecology between the viewer and the artist or creator, reflecting on their interaction, communication and collaboration to produce a certain experience. I demonstrated this relationship through comparing the sense of touch and sight to understand or intellectualise the work, emphasising on the two, very different ecologies and how that may affect the way they interpret the artwork and the world around them. Extending from these ideas, I decided to focus on ‘colour’ as a basis to further explore the ecology of the human senses and the differing perceptions that we may have according to that particular sense.

The question that was asked for assessment task two was simply, ‘what is colour’? Colour is an intangible concept that is most commonly perceived through the sense of sight, but I wondered whether there were other ways we could ‘see’ colour. I aimed to subvert the traditional mode of using the sight senses to perceive colour and introduced or suggest other and different ways that we could experience colour. I wanted to ‘test’ colour through the other ‘realities’ or worlds, such as, through the digital technology. Ultimately, I aimed to unlock our other senses when perceiving colour to re-discover and re-define its very notion.

Neil Harbisson is a British contemporary cyborg artist. His rare medical condition, achromatopsia, which is total colour blindness has led him to design an antenna that transmits colours into vibrations which he perceives as sound. Harbisson is an example who has utilised a different and unconventional sense (hearing) to perceive colour.

“Colour is basically hue, saturation and light. Right now, I can see light in shades of grey, but can’t see its saturation or hue. The eyeborg detects the light’s hue and converts it into a sound frequency that I can hear as a note [wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency, so it can easily convert the wavelength of the light into a sound frequency]. It also translates the saturation of the colour into a volume. So if it's a vivid red I will hear it more loudly.”

During this research, I discovered the Munsell Colour Notation System and the Sonochromatic Music Scale. The Munsell System divides and categories colour into three attributes of hue, value and chroma whereas the Sonochromatic Scale allocates a specific to a musical note. I utilised these systems to quantify and ‘measiure’ colour so that I could work with a tangible representation and translate it into the various sense ecologies.

I started off by recording simple phrases, such as ‘hello’, using the app ‘HumOn’ which allows the user to translate vocal sounds into musical notes. I then matched each note according to the Sonochromatic scale to produce a colour chart that visually represented the notes. ‘Hello’ was a very simple phrase that did not produce many notes, resulting in simplistic colour charts, hence, I worked with more complex sounds in the subsequent experiments. I decided to focus on the horizontal sequence, bringing it into Adobe Illustrator and creating corresponding shapes to represent each primary colour to be matched with the Sonochromatic scale. Lastly, I brought the shapes into Fusion360 to be extruded to create a three-dimensional form.

FINAL WORK: 2/2

‘Anger’

FINAL WORK: ½

‘Laughter’

Experiment 4: Fusion360

For this experiment, I brought the illustrated shapes into the world of Fusion360, a CAD (Computer Aided Design) program primarily used for model making and 3D printing.

Experiment 3

I decided to try to create my own ‘measurements’ for colour, similar to how it is represented by musical notes on the Sonochromatic scale. 

However, instead of sounds, I wanted to utilise the sense of touch to recognise a colour. I used the colours from the Sonochromatic scale to base my ‘measurements’. I allocated a basic shape for each of the primary colours, red, blue and yellow and merged these shapes together to form the secondary colours, orange, green and purple. 

Experiment 2: 2/2 - Laughing 

A similar experiment to the previous one, except this time I tested out the positive emotion of laughter.  Although colour and positivity and negatively are unrelated, in this scenario, I found it interesting to discover that laughter produced darker and dull tones whereas the angry cats produced brighter ones.

Experiment 2: 1/2 - Angry Cats

Further exploring from my previous experiments, this time I used more complex sounds to create a sequence. 

I sourced sounds of angry cats from YouTube due to their great tonal variations which would allow me to incorporate an extensive range of colours. I liked how this experiment has also allowed me to present emotions through colour. 

Experiment 2: Illustrator

After recording words into the sound environment, I brought it into the ‘colour’ environment via Adobe Illustrator, utilising the Sonochromatic Music Scale to represent each music note.

Inevitably, due to the simplicity, I was unable to reproduce in the highly saturated and colourful version of Harbisson’s ‘Colour Scores’.

From left to right, it ‘reads’ ‘hello, ‘konnichwa’ and ‘annyeonghaseyo’.

Experiment 1: 3/3 - Annyeonghaseyo

Experiment 1: 2/3 - Konnichiwa

Experiment1: 1/3 -  Hello

All 3 parts of these experiments are MY voice expressing a particular word, in this case, ‘hello’, simplified into musical sound/s and note/s.

I have found exemplary creative practitioners utilising and focusing on their other senses to view traditionally established modes of perception, such as using sound to identify colour instead of sight. 

I plan on experimenting with Harbisson’s method of perceiving colour and sound, utilising the Sonochromatic Music Scale as well as the Munsell Colour Notation System.

However, as I am not musically gifted, I needed a software that could translate sounds into musical notes so that I could translate them again into colour. Google gave me and quick and instant suggestions to these types of programs, of which two caught my eye.

‘Scorecloud’ allows the user to transcribe and instrument into musical sheet notation.

https://scorecloud.com/

‘HumOn’ is a similar app, but additionally allows the user to translate their voice into musical notation by humming a certain tune. 

Research 2: Neil Harbisson

Neil Harbisson is a British contemporary artist who identifies as a cyborg. His rare medical condition, achromatopsia, which is total colour blindness has lead him to design an antenna that transmits colours into vibrations which he perceives as sound.

“Colour is basically hue, saturation, and light. Right now, I can see light in shades of grey, but I can’t see its saturation or hue. The eyeborg detects the light’s hue and converts it into a sound frequency that I can hear as a note [wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency so it can easily convert the wavelength of the light into a sound frequency]. It also translates the saturation of the colour into a volume. So if it’s a vivid red I will hear it more loudly.” - Harbisson

While reading this, I thought back to the Munsell Colour Notation System.

Image 2: He has also, conversely, presented this through his ‘Colour Scores’ that translate sounds into colours. This particular ‘colour score’ is a translation of Justin Bieber’s song ‘Baby’. 

The Sonochromatic Music Scale is a conversion of wavelengths of light into musical notations, which Harbisson has utilised to translation sound in colours.

Research 1: Munsell Colour Notation System

Before I experiment with ways to translate colour to be ‘read’ by other senses, I needed to find a way to quantify colour so that I could tangibly represent it. 

This system divides colour into three attributes of, hue, value and chroma.

Hue refers to the colour itself, such as green, red, blue etc. These are given letter codes, so red is represented by the letter ‘R’.

Value is how light or dark a colour is and is indicated by a number, from lightest to darkest. So the value ‘2′ would be lighter than the value ‘6′.

Chroma is how weak or strong a colour is, indicated by a number from the weakest (left) to the strongest (right).

Assessment 2: Question 1

Assessment 1 was about exploring the sense of touch to perceive a visual object and the ecology of the sense that is used in this interaction. Maintaining this same idea, I want to explore the perception of colour through other means of our senses. 

Colour is an intangible concept that is most commonly perceived through sight. However, I want to subvert this ecology and introduce different ways of ‘experiencing’ colour, in particular, through tactile elements. I also want to explore colour in other ‘realities’, such as, through the digital ecology. 

Week 6: Context & Time

We utilised these simple bricks found from the campus dumpster to express the notion of context altering the definition and purpose of a work.

These materials transitioned through three stages. That is, they were once tools to hold the blue, plastic tarp. They then became disposables and finally the restoration of their purpose as they became communicative and instructional instruments.