Digital Coloring: Complements

Modern and Historic Chicago

Color and Sound

Here is an interesting article on converting between color and sound:

a color blind artist uses a machine that identifies the color spectrum by associating the color's light wavelength with an equivalent sound wavelength; the artist hears the sound and identifies it with a color.

One wonders what shifts in perception a non-color blind artist would experience with such a machine that was out of sync ... hear blue and see green ... a headache?(probably). Would the visual input override the aural input? or would the aural and visual color input blend in the brain to a combined output color? I don't know enough about how color is processed in the brain, but it does remind me of the a small group of people who can see colors when they hear sounds -- synesthetic perceptions.

Technology... Old (2)

Something easy to make with the kids -- an old optical toy, called a thaumatrope, blurs two images into one. It and other historical optical toys can be found on the this website.

Technology ... Old

We are so used to Powerpoint, etc., and digital projectors, it's quaint to think about using old fashioned slide projectors and transparency projectors. Here's something even quainter: I ran across Magic Lanterns today when I was looking for information on the Burnham Plan. Magic Lanterns are a precursor to slide projectors -- individually painted glass slides (later photo positives on glass) were projected with a light source, enlarging lens, and crank to create an animation.

Pic-A-Day: Chair

Proposal Evaluation

I sat in for a short while to observe a grants panel (open to the public) to watch the selection process, hoping it would shed light on the proposal process. Because the particular process is designed to provide meaningful feedback to the submitting artists, there was extensive and in depth discussion of each artist's work, which was nice. I suspect not all jury panels have this level of organized discussion.

While the conclusions I came away with are not new, they are very good reminders:

(1) Cohesiveness or coherence between all the submitted images matters; unexplained (via the artist statement) incongruities detracted from the work and the proposal.

(2) Coherence between the work and the proposal matters -- extensions of the work ought to appear natural or, if not, then ought to be well explained.

(3) The budget for the requested funds needs to match the proposed project. Really, coherence across the proposal matters.

(4) The work and from the proposal need to leave the impression that the artist can accomplish the proposed work -- a potential issue for an artist seeking funds to branch out into a new field.

(5) Showing in "starter" or relatively open venues for too long can be seen as a negative because it raises questions about the growth of the artist and the growth of the artist's work.

(6) Jurors do disagree.