Proposal for A Color Box

A Color Box
Proposal by Gabriel Mott
color box blog

Two years ago I took a color class with Dick Nelson that completely changed my sense of color. As I made discoveries about how and why certain combinations of colors created brilliant luminosity, I was astounded and wanted to share this experience with everybody.

Description:
A Color Box is a portable room about 8 feet cubed. Using a computer, a projector, a Wii game system and a screen, a person walking into the room will be able to interact with a color grid projected on the screen. By touching a color swatch, the entire room will change to that color.

Intention:
Inspire and educate people about color through scale and interactivity.

Experience:
You walk into a room and all you see is a grid of color on the wall. When you move your hands over the grid, the room changes color to match the color you touched.

Surrounded by color in a room that instantly changes based on your behavior is startling. When you are faced with how your perception of color changes based on your surroundings, your mind opens.

Installation:
SOURCE Interactive Arts Festival Maui Hawaii February 2009. This event is a four day gathering sort of like a mini Burning Man for Maui Hawaii. Approximately 500 people will attend.

Concept:
The swatches of color projected on the wall do not change color, only the background changes color. However, the individual swatches will seem to change color. This is an effect of our eyes called simultaneous contrast. Additional effects that will enlighten the user are halation (the brilliance and luminosity achieved with specific combinations and steps of mixed color).

Budget/Materials: $3000
All materials will be purchased used or at reduced cost where possible
Wii gaming System: $300.
4000 lumin Projector: $1400
8’ x 8’ screen: $200
Laptop computer: $400
Frosted Plexiglas: $400
Construction materials (hinges, locks, screws, paint): $300

The primary wall will be made of a screen (8'x8') projected upon from the backside. The screen will be filled with imagery similar to the color website I created called colorisrelative.com.

The interaction will be possible by reverse engineering a Wii gaming system. Johnny Lee at the Ted Conference explains how to do this.

Future:
A Color Box will be reusable and mobile. Following SOURCE, A Color Box will be available to show at other festivals and schools.

I need your help to make this happen. Visit the demo page for A Color Box to donate.

Thank you!
Gabe

Dick Nelson

This page has been updated and is current here Dick Nelson

Dick Nelson is the teacher who deconstructed my sense of color. After his 8 week course I was for the first time able to look at colors and begin to understand how much of the three primaries each contained. I was able to understand how luminosity was created by combining colors of similar families. He taught me about halation.

Dick Nelson grew up in Hawai‘i, and after graduating from Yale University, returned home to become Chairman of the Art Department at Punahou High School in Honolulu. For 22 years, he taught everything from life drawing to art history, and of course, his passion, watercolor.

“It’s the quality of luminosity which intrigues me, and my love of seeing through one color to another, ” explains Nelson.

He is creator of the now famous Tri-Hue watercolor technique, wherein all the colors on the finished painting emerge by mixing only three colors on the palette. Since his retirement over 25 years ago, he has made Maui his home and continued his passion for education, becoming both teacher and mentor to a generation of Maui artists. [more]

Some words on Dick Nelson:

...one of Maui's most respected artists...
... a brilliant colour guru who pontificates from a high volcano on Maui.
...opened up my mind to new ways of looking at the world
...one of Hawaii’s greatest painters and teachers

He recently taught a workshop in Hilo. His greatest claim to fame may however be that he is the second most senior alumni to share honors with Barack Obama as a distinguished alumn of Punahou High School where he taught art.

Color is relative, "(Yellow to) Blue Poles" pre-release

When you click on a bar from the color array, the background of the webpage will match the color of the bar you chose.

There are sixteen steps of poles. The background of the page entirely affects our perception of the color of each pole. Sometimes, a yellow pole looks as if it is glowing in blue.

I originally created ten poles with yellow on the left and blue on the right. The blue is a combination of Cyan and Magenta. The Blue and Yellow that I chose are actually complements.

My roommate Tessa asked me tonight, "Where is the green if it's mixing blue and yellow?"

If we had been mixing Cyan and Yellow, we would have gotten Green. As it is, we are toning. As we move from parents who are complements, the children gray.

When I made the ten poles and checked to see how the colors would appear on the web (primed for 256 colors) , the hexadecimal code was all mumbo jumbo.

I wanted clean language. I wanted a progression of color steps that matched on the web as I was seeing in Adobe Illustrator.

I made 16 poles, so that it matched the number of poles within the scheme of the binary color scheme. The progression is hexadecimal codes.

It's beautiful how it counts down on the left four digits and counts up on the right two digits: #FFFF00, #EEEE11, #DDDD22, #CCCC33, #BBBB44, #AAAA55, #999966, #888877, #777788, #666699, #5555AA, #4444BB, #3333CC, #2222DD, #1111EE, #0000FF

If you click on one of the blue poles on the far right-- say the third from the right, yellow suddenly seems to extend all the way across. And the same is true on the opposite side. If you choose the bar just two or three steps in from the left, from true blue, all of the bars to the left will appear yellow. And those to the right will appear blue.

Halation Horizons in the NY Times for Obama

In this article, the writer is juxtaposing Obama's journey to the classic American outsider icon. I was amazed to see the background of the image contain the straight horizontal lines I've been obsessed with from Dick's homework assignment.

In the class, we took the colors from a matrix (groups of families of color based on four chosen outside corners) and put those colors down as straight horizontal lines. (see my many posts of halation horizons)

I am very curious if this piece was created using a matrix of colors...

Happy Birthday Dad: Plum Halation

[the definitive page for halation has moved]

I was thinking my dad would like this set of colors, no idea why, but it's his birthday. Hey, Happy Birthday Dad.

When you move your mouse over the individual swatches, the background of the webpage changes to that color. As you move the mouse around to each swatch, you can see halations in the swatches.

The colors seem to change in the matrix as the background changes. The lower set of four boxes, is the same swatch set as the middle of the matrix above.

I had been curious how the middle boxes within the matrixes would respond without their parents surrounding them and keeping them separate from the background. Mostly, they serve as matching swatches to watch how different they look than the same swatches above as the background changes.

The Plum page is dedicated to my dad. He was born in 1939. Happy Birthday and may all your dreams come true!

ColorIsRelative.com launched

Color is Relative is a website dedicated to showing luminosity achieved through simple color combinations. On the site, the image at left is interactive. By moving the mouse over a single swatch the background color of the page will change to the same color. The effect is intended to show the impact of changing the context of color.

In the next month, I will be releasing my next series of paintings that will be based on the color theory I have learned from Dick Nelson.

You can also visit my color page on facebook. Seeing Things, Color is Relative.

The grid seems to change color as you move the mouse over each swatch. Take your time.

This is the alpha version, please let me know your reaction and make comments.

New Halation Horizons

Color is relative: video: halation explained

Gorillas and Halation

Softness into the Distance

Halation 2

Olive Wine

definition of halation

Halation 3

definition of halation

Halation 4

The same color matrix.

definition of halation

Halation 5

definition of halation

Halation 6

definition of halation

Halation

Meet two colors, we'll call them the parents.
On the left, Purple, on the right, Blue.



By mixing each color equally, we achieve the middle child.


By adding the middle child and creating an array you will see halation.

The middle color seems to vibrate a little. If you look longer, you will note that the middle swatch of color has a little of the purple on the right and a little blue on the left.

Here's a full array of different colors with equal steps of 5 children.





How do solid colors start to look a little 3 dimensional?
Where does this gradient come from?

The effect is counterintuitive. Each of the seven rectangles above contains a unique and solid block of color. Each square is a single color and yet each appears not to be.

It's beautiful.

The colors begin to vibrate beyond their individual recognition. They suddenly know about eachother and they become luminous.

This is called halation.

Halation, as an artistic term, is the spontaneous effect of the eyes spreading color beyond it's actual realm.

When you start to see the individual color swatches as gradients, you are seeing halation. It's a phenomenon of our eyes to find a vibrancy in specific placements of colors. In the examples above, the placement of each swatch was based on equal steps to parents. Halation also occurs between equal steps between hues of equal value

definition of halation