alexander wiethoff: colour vision.

We all know that our senses are deeply inter-connected, and that the colours we see affect (and are affected by) our mood, and that our mood affects (and is affected by) our body language. What a tangled web colour weaves. Deep inside our brain, there are synapses and nerve endings who’ve got this whole thing locked down, but scientists and colour theorists are just beginning to understand just how complex these processes really are.

German interaction designer Alexander Wiethoff‘s “Colour Vision”, an interactive installation at Rohrbach, Austria’s Museum of Perception (try and tell me that’s not a place you’d like to spend a day in…) is a study of how our body language affects colour, and vice versa. Guests enter the room and based on how they move, sit, or stand, the rooms colour automatically shifts to reflect it. Bouncing up and down creates yellow, while outstretching your arms summons red. Slumping down in the chair in the centre of the exhibit turns the room blue, while green, the colour of creativity, is brought out by tilting the held or placing your chin, like The Thinker, into your hands.

anne de vries: “eye candy” + “knowledge” + “game”.

Dutch artist Anne de Vries‘ work is right up my alley. It’s weird, colourful, makes no sense, and, in the case of her sculpture “Eye Candy” (2008) has think, glistening laqcuer-like paint oozing out of soda cans and chocolate bars. I don’t know what it means, and I don’t care…

His photos have that completely non-sensical, yet still based in this every-day feeling. Like in “Knowledge” (2008), where the man with the wires for a head is having breakfast. I’m not sure if I’m more interested in that he has wires for a head, or that he’s somehow made his way over that hurdle and now just wants some breakfast of milk and books.

My other fave on his site is “Game” (2008). There’s something about people doing mundane things that are subtly not so mundane that I really love.

daniel eatock: pantone pen prints.

It’s becoming clear to me that I need to spend more time letting the ink from pens leak into the world around me. First Fernando Brizio beat me to the punch with his stellar bowl and now UK artist Daniel Eatock has followed a similar method for his prints.

He arranged a set of ink pens in the colour spectrum and let them rest upside down on 500 sheets of paper for a month. At the end, the ink had seeped through 73 sheets and created, as you can see, beautiful and organic clouds of colour.

Each of the 73 works was numbered and priced based on how far it rested in the stack. Number 1/73 was furthest from the top (and so got the least amount of colour) and was priced at £1. 73/73, the most brilliant and thickly coloured of the group, was valued at £73. Easy as that.

Besides being astonished at how cheap these are, it’s the wonderful simplicity of the whole project – from the idea to the execution to the pricing itself – that I love so much.

Having been inspired, I’m currently lying in bed with 100 uncapped Crayola markers rolling around my white sheets. I’m hoping for big things. I’ll let you all know how it turns out…

Via NOTCOT

matt pyke: advanced beauty.

As creator and all-around genius behind UK design shop Universal Everything, Matt Pyke serves up some of the most eye-catching and jaw-dropping digital design on the planet. His client list includes heavy hitters like Apple, Adidas, MTV, Coke, Nokia, Nike and a little shindig called the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

The anticipation for his latest project is keeping me up at night: Advanced Beauty is a series of “sound sculptures” curated by Universal Everything with sound design by frequent collaborator Freeform, the music project led by Matt’s brother, Simon Pyke. Each segment is visually and sonically unique and directed by groundbreaking designers from around the world – including visionaries like Marc Kremers, Karsten Schmidt, Thomas Traum, Alex Peverett, Tom Scholefield, Paul Simpson, and Jonathan Garin.

If the awe-inspiring trailer and lushly color-filled first segment by New York-based designer Mate Steinforth are any indication, then we’re in for a total breakthrough when Advanced Beauty finally drops in Spring 2008. I think it’s pretty safe to say right now: Advanced Beauty will be the shit.

purely awesome pencil crayon fence.

Sometimes I find things that make me so happy I’m not sure what to type. Oh wait… yes I do. When I die and go that personal utopia everyone goes to when they die – that place where all your dreams come true and everything looks exactly the way you want it to – the fences will all look like this:

I will next to the fence on a sunshiny day, finally reunited with Nancy (the goldfish I killed in Grade 5), and eat Mini Wheats from my Fernando Brizio rainbow bowl and plan all my angelic do-gooding.

Via Fabrica

pantone: blue is the new red.

The moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. Today the New York Times unveiled Pantone’s choice for the colour of 2008. Say a big PFO to 2007’s Chili Pepper Red and welcome No. 18-3943 TCX (a.k.a. Blue Iris):

In a statement, Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, said: “Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspects of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic.”

At least we’re not over-thinking it.

Via Queerty

bluorange… no, i mean greeple… ah, shit.

Phillip Meyer Eberz over at ojohaven.com has set up this colour-based brain teaser at a school in Texas and he’s posted a refreshing-version on his site.

The idea is to speak aloud the colour you see, not the word of the colour. So if you saw BLUE you’d say “red”. Apparently it’s best to do this with someone because you won’t even realize when you’re doing it wrong.

Via Ojohaven

random website friday: COLOURlovers.

How I’ve lived so many years of my life without COLOURlovers I’ll never know. This site is mental candy. Highly addictive creative mental candy.

Described as a “Colour + Design Community for Creative Inspiration”, the site lives up to it’s name and delivers inspiration in spades. Simple to navigate, you can discover new artists in it’s extensive blog or create your own colours, palettes, and patterns. Spread them around, search through others’, send them a love note if you’re into what they’ve done, or create your own palettes and patterns from other people’s work. The site links everything together seamlessly so credit is always given where credit is due and you can also follow a line of creativity and design between different people from around the world.

To me, the best part are the palettes. Not just from the formations of colour, but because each one is named by it’s creator. Like the world’s most succinct poetry, exploring the various chromatic connections between the names inspired by the colours (or the colours inspired by the names) is frighteningly addictive. We’re talking Tetris-addictive.

When I signed up , there were already a whopping 234,097 palettes. A side-bar on the page shows the latest palettes and patterns as they’re created, and several new ones are added each minute. It’s a constant stream of creativity and you can’t help but jump in.

This is my first palette, bleu comme le ciel:

Yeah, I like blue. I was only able to make it through 500 of the palettes, but keep reading to check out my ten faves (in no particular order):

vischeck: shape + colourblind.

My obsession with colour takes many forms: design, emotion, and art are obvious. But I’m also fascinated with the science and history of colour and about how the lack of colour can affect us.

Paul Martin, a web designer in Orlando, Florida (not the former Canadian Prime Minister, though I’m sure he’s looking for something to talk about these days…), posted colour-sighted vs. colour-blind comparisons on his site at Critique Wall. Using a site called Vischeck, which approximates for the rest of us how people with various types of colourblindness see stuff out in the world, we get images like these:

Via Core 77

fernando brizio: somewhere over the rainbowl

Resistance is futile. When I die I want to be cremated and have my ashes buried in this vase.

 ‘Painting with Giotto #1’ by Fernando Brizio

The chromatic patterns in this piece by Portugese artist Fernando Brizio were created by embedding a bunch of felt-tipped markers into the lip of the vase. As the multi-hued inks leak into the porous ceramic, they bleed together and create an absolutely unique piece. He only produced 20 of these little beauties, and the price on his site is listed as “price on demand”. Which, translated into layman’s terms, means “don’t even think about it, po’ boy”.

Via Design Klub