Leonardo

A New Universal Vision: The "Casa da Cor" (House of Colour) ProjectAuthor(s): Philippe HenrySource: Leonardo, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1991), pp. 321-323Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1575575 .

Accessed: 13/06/2014 00:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The MIT Press and Leonardo are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toLeonardo.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.89 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:37:57 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GENERAL NOTE

A New Universal Vision: The Casa da

Car (House of Colour) Project

Philippe Henry

MODERN PHYSICS: RADICAL CONCEPTUAL CHANGES ARE IN COURSE

Something is going awry with the mechanistic perspective on which our beliefs are based. The ancient dream of

discovering the last frontier of reality, the all-embracing origin from which everything can be mathematically de- duced, is crumbling fast. Little remains of Democritus's

legacy of the nondivisible atomos. Atoms were first split in the nineteenth century with the discovery of the electron and radioactivity. Since then the atom has been further subdivided into quarks, leptons and bosons. This mechanis- tic fever has already led us to suspect that the strong agglu- tination of quarks within hadrons is the result of particle structure within the quarks.

The scientific community has begun to develop new

ways of understanding 'reality' [1]. For example, Erwin

Schr6dinger states, through his metaphorical experience of the cat, that the observer is a modifying agent of the ob- served. In the interaction of two quantic systems, each

mutually complicates the other, thus the notion of 'the reduction of the wave package'.

The existence of a 'fundamental block', a definite and

prime particle of matter, is less and less probable. Alain

Aspect's experiments were unable to reveal any system ex-

plaining the 'spin' interaction of two photons that is com-

patible with the principles of relativity. From the discussion of the original notions of time, space and causality, a web of interrelations emerges and not one of the properties of any of the parts is fundamental.

Changes are occurring among a number of scientific

premises, and these changes are not restricted to modern

physics. Change is also occurring in human culture through a radical transformation of our values. In this cultural con- text, colour seems to have acquired a primeval function, either as an indicative sign or as a sign that, when manipu- lated and structured, serves as an accelerating agent in the

development of a new universal vision. At the Casa da Cor project, we believe that it is possible to

manipulate and structure the denotative function of colour

theoretically and, as a result, accelerate the development of a new vision of human beings and their universe.

FROM THE GREEKS TO THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGY OF VISION: ONE TRADITION

By approximately 480 B.C., a 'new' approach to the question of colour appeared briefly in Greek culture, but it was lost in time. Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus and others believed

? 1991 ISAST Pergamon Press pic. Printed in Great Britain. 0024-094X/91 $3.00+0.00

in a 'visual fire', i.e. the human

eye could affect the properties of the observed object and col- our it [2]. Another approach was defended by Democritus and the atomists. They saw the phenomenon of colour in-

versely: the objects themselves were responsible for the emis- sion or 'radiations' to which A B S T R A C T

the human eye was sensitive. T Unfortunately, the prevailing The author presents the

contempt with regard to ap- premises and the objectives of the Casa da Cor project being devel-

pearances reduced colour to oped in Brazil. He discusses the an optical and physiological history of the study of colour per- phenomenon. ception and postulates that the

In the year 985, Al Hazin awareness of colour is a creation . , ~. . - .* 1 ~ ~of cultural origin. sealed the discussion of 'visual

fire' and left us a small aper- ture, empirical, mystifying and

hardly defensible, for what we would call an 'avatar', the metamorphosis of luminous

energy into colour. In Optiks, Newton bestowed the human

eye with the role of passive receptor. The prism was used to

prove that colour was but a trait of light, revealing itself

through the interference of matter as a support for reflec- tion, refraction, diffraction and transmission. His experimen- tum crucis, in spite of consecutive attacks over three centur- ies, still haunts us today. Ewald Hering makes it clear how little latitude Al Hazin left the people of the nineteenth

century: 'The material process cannot arrive at a certain

point of the brain, enter into something immaterial and then reappear at another point again as a material process" [3].

With the exception of Goethe, German empiricists be-

queathed to us a limited number of observations and left certain areas completely unexplained. Hering proposed a bidimensional vision of pairs of colours, in which the four colour sensations are arranged in two pairs of complemen- tary colours: red-green and yellow-blue [4]. Helmholtz pro- posed a trichromatic vision that transforms external light stimuli of various spectral compositions into nervous excita- tions that are interpreted as the three energies of the colour sense: red, green, blue [5]. Purkinje developed a theory of

scotopic and photopic vision, or what we call the Purkinje shift, in which the colour blue appears brighter and the

Philippe Henry (writer, multimedia researcher and producer), Casa da Cor, Av. Sabia 128, Moema, CEP 04515 Sao Paulo/SP, Brazil.

Received 16 September 1988.

LEONARDO, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 321-323, 1991 321

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.89 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:37:57 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

colour red appears darker in twilight than in bright daylight [6]. All of these axioms associate luminous and physio- logical phenomenon. They still hold true today.

The 'science of the relations be- tween body and soul', Fechner's psy- chophysics, reduces colour perception to a luminous input and presents its electrical and chemical translation as the indisputable cause of determined

physical and physiological reactions [7]. This psychophysical characterization re- mains the basis of the modern experi- mental laboratories that study vision.

Contemporary neurophysiologists, such as E. H. Land, Zeki and McNichol, have proposed complex resolutions of a problem that has historically been

approached unilaterally [8]. Goethe warned his contemporaries about this

strategy: "Do not search behind the

appearances: they, themselves, are the

mystery."

THE PERPETUAL GAP: COLOUR AS A CULTURAL PHENOMENON

Between the occidental perspective, wherein colour is an optical and physi- ological phenomenon, and the oriental

perspective, wherein colour is a mystic sign, a transcendental indicative, there is an enormous valley to be explored. We could call it 'colour as logos' or 'col- our as a system of ideas'. This proposi- tion is being systematically explored by the Casa da Cor project and generates more questions than answers at pre- sent. For example, in The Forms of Colours, Karl Gerstner takes up once

again the idea that our ancestors were achromatic [9]. Even if we do not con- sider certain hard-to-believe explana- tions for this, such as the first human

sight systems contained only rods with- out cones, we can still ask whether there is an evolution in the perception of colours. Psychologists teach us that chil- dren perceive the red hues first and only later do they distinguish blue. In the world of plants, Cronquist's phylogenic scale defines more highly evolved plants as those better prepared for survival and generation of descendancy [10]. This study shows, once again, a trend towards blue and on to ultraviolet with

greater evolution. Even in anthropol- ogy the colour red belongs to the first chromatic manifestations of civilization.

Nietzsche tells us that the Greeks

were acianobleptics (blind to blue) [11]. Manlio Brusatin states in his re- cent work History of Colours, "The colour blue, by itself, is of a profoundly orien- tal nature, a shaded colour and confus-

ing. Occidental thought clearly distin-

guishes between the world of ideas and of being (black and white), on one hand, and the world of nature and sub- stance (yellow and red), on the other hand" [12]. According to Plato, ideas come from the 'humours' of black. But, questions Casa da Cor consultant Vilem Flusser, if colours are so remote in the thought of the occidental tradition, "how can we explain the contradiction between the noble 'colourless theory' and the visual pollution of Athens?" [13]. He also asks us to reflect on the

following: "The nineteenth century was a period of enlightment and victory for the natural sciences. Theoretically it was an era which should have ex-

ploded in colour. Mankind travelled to India, descended to the level of the molecule and penetrated the heavens to explore the stars and all was full of colour. Yet, there was never a period of

history as gray as the nineteenth cen-

tury". Perhaps we could escape the Pla-

tonic scorn for appearances and organ- ize these questions into some form of a cultural theory of colour. Then we could join Gerstner, who said that "colours only become colours once we have formed them in our conscious-a

process which is unfinished and prob- ably will remain so forever" [14].

FROM GOETHE ONWARD: THE SUBJECT AND ITS

PROPER PLACE

Plato's scorn for appearances, formu- lated on the principle of his 'visual fire', is the very basis of Goethe's polemic Theory of Colours [15]. Goethe described what he called urphaenomen by quoting an old mystic writer, "If the eye were not

sunny, how could we perceive light?" Schelling also defends in his philoso- phy of nature that "All in the universe is animated". The premise that the human eye produces colour returns the

subject to its proper place. This is a

premise directly opposed to Newton's proposal but it is defendable. For ex-

ample, Kant, in Critique of Pure Reason, says, "We have no proof that the sensa- tion of red has anything remotely to do with the properties of cinnabar which is

the cause of this sensation." Or Rudolf Steiner, in Introduction to the Scientific Work of Goethe, states, "We can not find the point at which the movement, which is at the origin of perception, transforms itself into its effect: percep- tion itself. Are we condemned to say that the two are in a cause and effect relation? ... The image of the world offered to the senses is the sum total of the perceptions which metamorphose in the absence of any form of material base". Finally, Hermann von Helmholtz

says, "A human being knows only him- self insofar as he knows the world, which he perceives only in himself and he perceives himself only in it".

In this context, to return the subject (the modifying agent of the observed) to its proper place also implies recuper- ating, recreating or renovating inter-

subjective relations, thus altering the

ontology that still maintains the theo- retical barrier between the 'subject' and the 'object'. The 'web of interrela- tions' of modern physics suggests the

emergence of a web of intersubjectivity. This web would contain the same in- trinsic principles of dynamics and non-

reducibility to any one of its parts. The fallacious idea of 'colour in and by it- self would therefore be removed once and for all. Once colour has been freed from this finite conception, it then can be converted into an interactive system, connecting all through a renewed per- spective.

Colourist and Casa da Cor consultant

Jean-Maurice Simoneau observes, "Sight which appears to unite us through the same image, in fact divides us through our sensibility and our culture. Man must invent signals that are perceived with the same meaning and the same

intensity by specific groups, in specific conditions" [16]. Flusser suggests the

development of a denotative colour code with only one possible interpreta- tion but, at the same time, rich in mean-

ing [17]. The creation of such a colour code would indeed be possible once a cultural theory of colour has been es- tablished. Taken to its ultimate con-

sequences, we then have a new brain, a new being, a new world. Neurologists already suspect that language acqui- sition by children is more than just development; it is a selection of connec- tions and a specialization of brain areas [18]. The learning of a colour code, much richer and more complex, would

imply new brain specialization as well as different synapses.

322 Henry, A New Universal Vision: The Casa da Cr Project

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.89 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:37:57 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

CONCLUSION: THE CASA DA COR PROJECT The main objective of the Casa da Cor

project is to establish a cultural net directed towards this new 'reality' in

perceiving and understanding colour. The proposals mentioned in this article are part of the project.

It is not only colour that we seek to understand. Colour is the pretext for a new form of interaction and integra- tion among beings and with the world about them.

References and Notes

1. J. P. Pharabod and S. Ortoli, Le Cantique des

quantiques (Paris: La Decouverte, 1986).

2. F. Gerritsen, Het Fenomeen Kleur (De Bilt, Hol- land: Cantecleer, 1974); French Ed., Presence de la couleur, Monique Chevane, trans. (Paris: Dessain et Tolra, 1975).

3. H. Lang, "Color Vision Theories in Nineteenth-

Century Germany between Idealism and Empiri- cism", ColorResearch and Application 12, No. 5, 270- 280 (1987).

4. E. Hering, "Grundzuge der Lehre vom Licht- sinn", in Handbuch der gesammten Augenheilkunde (Leipzig: W. Englemann, 1905).

5. H. L. F. von Helmholtz, Handbuch der Physiolo- gischen Optik (Hamburg: Voss, 1867).

6. J. E. Purkinje, Beobactungen und VersuchezurPhys- iologie der Sinne (Berlin: Reimer, 1825).

7. G. T. Fechner, "Uber die subjektiven comple- mentarfarben", Pogg. Annalen 44 (1838).

8. L. T. Sharpe, "A Landslide for Colour Science?", Color Research and Application 12, No. 2, 81-84 (1987).

9. K. Gerstner, Die Formen der Farben (Frankfurt: Verlag Athenaeum, 1986); French Ed., Les Formes des couleurs, Georges Monnier, trans. (Paris: Bibli- otheque des Arts, 1986).

10. A. Cronquist, The Evolution and Classification of FloweringPlants (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

11. F. Nietzsche, Aurora, Portuguese Ed., Rui Ma- galhaes, trans. (Porto: Res Editora Ltda., 1983) p.

199. (Originally published in German as Morgen- roethe. )

12. M. Brusatin, Storia dei colon (S.P.A.: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1983); French Ed., Histoire des couleurs, Claude Laurion, trans. (Paris: Flamma- rion, 1986).

13. Speech delivered by V. Flusser at the first con- sultants' meeting of the Casa da Cor project, Sao Paulo, 9 February 1988.

14. Gerstner [9].

15. J. W. von Goethe, Theory of Colours, 8th Ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). Reproduced from Goethe's Theory of Colours, Charles L. Eastlake, trans. (London:John Murray, 1840).

16. Speech delivered byJ.-M. Simoneau at the first consultants' meeting of the Casa da CorProject, Sao Paulo, 9 February 1988.

17. Speech delivered by V. Flusser at the second consultants' meeting of the Casa da CorProject, Sao Paulo, 19 March 1988.

18. I. Otto, "Les circuits du langage", Science et Vie Trimestriel, No. 162, (1988) pp. 104-109.

Henry, A New Universal Vision: The Casa da CorProject 323

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.89 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:37:57 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions