Introduction and Overview – color is fundamental

1. Science and Art: two distinct ways to investigate color
2. Survey and discussion of students, interests and goals.
3. Exercise: draw a picture of a given environment. Indicate the sources and characteristics of the light in the scene.

Light and Color

1. The spectrum of Color
2. Complimentary Colors
3. Light Sources – sun, sky, varieties of artificial light
4. Exercise: Look at your own work through a selection of the colored filters we gave you. Write down what you saw: did anything surprise you?

Student work from the Interactive Color Seminar course

Color Systems and Language

1. Names of Colors
2. Are colors universal?
3. The Stroop effect -when the name interferes with the color
4. Light below the surface of objects
5. Inventing new colors
6. Exercise: bring in a selection of colors that best characterize your own work. As an example you might bring in a pie chart of the five most common colors in your work

Color Systems and Spaces: ordering colors

Color and Language: Are there exactly 11 basic colors?

Class moved to Friday Oct. 8th

Field trip to Brian Gross Fine Art, 49 Geary St, 5th Floor. Meet us there at 12 noon

Light and color in the eye: rods and cones

1. Rods and night vision: “At night, all cats are gray”
2. Cow’s Eye Dissection: visit by Exploratorium Explainers
3. Exercise: Look at your own work using only your rod vision. Write down what you saw: did anything surprise you?
4. Written proposals for midterm project due

Interactive Color Seminar | Student Work

Color Vision: Three types of cones provide our color vision

Color Vision Variations: colorblindness, animal color vision

Context Effects: color contrast, assimilation, and constancy

1. Interaction of Colors: Chevreul, Albers,
2. Patterns of Colors: colored textures
3. Exercise: Take two identical swatches of grey paper; then try to make them look as different as possible by putting them in different contexts.
4. Midterm project due

Class moved to 12 noon.

Meet us at the entrance of The Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon St.

Interactive Color Seminar | Student Work

Luminance -a black and white view of the world

1. Shadows and Shading: from circle to sphere
2. Black and White versus Color: what color adds to an image
3. Exercise: Bring in two images of your artwork, one in original color, the other a black and white photo of the same artwork.

Illuminants and surfaces, Color and Time

1. Characterizing illuminants: brightness, color temperature, color-rendering index, polarization
2. Angle, size and distance of lighting
3. Lighting your art
4. Color and Time: Gradual changes, Flickering colors, Colors in motion, Color animation
5. Color Illusion: McCollough Effect, Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s Illusions
6. Exercise: Take a piece of your own art under different lighting conditions: try to optimize the lighting conditions: write us a note on what you did and what you saw.

Interactive Color Seminar | Student Work

Color and Emotion -how do colors affect us?

Color and Culture: color meanings and fashions

Color, Technology and Art

1. Color reproduction: color processes and color gamuts, Digital Color: new color technologies.
2. Be prepared to give a 5-minute presentation of your final project. To the extent possible you’ll be presenting your projects in the conference room. That room will be available to you at 7PM.
3. Two points to cover in your presentation: 1.) How is this color experience interactive? 2.) What were the trials and errors on the way to achieve this result?

Interactive Color Seminar | Student Work

Poster Art -limited palettes and political aspirations

1. Featured artists will be Banksy, Yokoo Tadanori.
2. Visiting speaker will be artist Nick Ackerman

Movie and Popcorn Night

1. This class meets in the Lecture hall at SFAI. We will watch and discuss snippets of film from directors who use color in important and distinctive ways, such as Greenaway, Argento, Jarman, and Bergman.
2. Final Projects are due