Colours of the Sphere
A research project in the School of Art, Design & Media, University of Portsmouth, England UK
The fundamental process

This involves participants contributing a chosen colour and explaining on video, in whatever terms they wish, the significance and meaning that colour holds. The video clip is attached to its corresponding colour position in the universe, represented by a marker.

By using a common three value coordinate for colour i.e. HSV (Hue Saturation and Value), there will be a corresponding Cartesian spatial relationship translatable to X, Y and Z. Any colour chosen therefore will have an X, Y, Z spatial position; this will locate it precisely within the environment.

During exhibition the audience, through interaction with the interface navigate through the universe recalling the video clips in an immersive environment of sound and colour. They will be able to travel to the region of yellows, to the region of blues, of reds… and find who has made a claim to those colours and why. If they have participated and contributed they will be able to search for themselves. There are currently over 500 contributors. This increases during each exhibition.

Navigational controls will be as simple as possible to enable engagement by the widest possible audience.

The Analytical Engine

A significant aspect of the project is the creation of an analytical engine, which interrogates the associations a colour has within the contributions. It will therefore represent: age, gender, ethnicity, geography, wealth or deprivation, formal or informal institutions or organizations, formal and informal social groupings, class, political opinions, culture, a time, a chronology, religious or philosophical beliefs etc. There will, through the analysis of this associated information, be generated complex interrelated threads of narrative. With the development of the input system to include remote sources, such as web, it will create a vast database of colour information.