ChromOrgasm Abstract/Intro: Color Sortie: Multiple Color Vectors

The following ChromOrgasm Blog Series will house approximately twenty short color "sortie" excerpts from my two recent papers entitled, ChromOrgasm: ChRomancing w/Hues: Color & Its Interlocutors, and ChromOrgasm: Chromancing the Color Moshpit/Toward a Definition of ChromOrgasm, given at the 2004 MACAA Interplay Conference and 2006 SECAA Conference respectively.  The writing in the ChromOrgasm Blog Series will be in my "speaking short version" from the conferences,  and is further combined with excerpted roughs from my forthcoming self-published book entitled, ChromOrgasm.  pd 2/2011.

Abstract:  “Toward a Definition of ChromOrgasm”

  

            The artists romance with color has long been a seductive one.  From the sensual shape-shifting  quality of color to its  adaptive and assimilative properties, color often seduces the visual culture producer into a dangerous relationship.  Frequently, as an artist   flirts with his/her desire to manipulate color he/she begins to develop  a  power struggle with  the hidden hierarchical structure of color and its interlocutors.  Yet the deception of traditional theoretical primary systems, arbitrary linguistical associations,  and curatorial coding frequently restrain the artistic use of color. 

             Recently academics  and artists in many fields have begun to question the homogenous visual distribution systems  and manipulated marketing strategies of color.  Just how can a decentralized, feminine,  and nonlinear notion of color subvert the dominant  paradigms often controlled by  color corporations, pigment manufacturers, and color organizations?   What preconditions, preconceptions and prejudices in our personal environs mold the spatiality of our color creations?  What new provocative production strategies, teaching territories and artistic dialectics can be bridged from today's metamerism movement beyond the spent art historical two dimensional matrix?  

             For color to exist it must occupy multiple interdisciplinary vectors moving at multiple interdisciplinary velocities. This paper transgresses foundational myths, crosses technical boundaries, fashions interdisciplinary relationships, and open new hybridic conduits beyond the formal artistic and educational processes of color.  Sociopolitical issues such as globalization, human rights, war,  gender, and the “other”  are considered in connection with color accessibility, color reproduction  and  color (MIS)management.  With the wide array of contemporary polychromatic visual stimuli, does the continued  engagement of color with  artists have a flirtatious future or is color destined to become mere fleeting romance?

            This paper introduces, outlines, and defines  a theoretical and  philosophical working model of ChromOrgasm.   The term ChromOrgasm was coined by the author over a period of five years while teaching foundational color theory.  It begins with the age old question: What colors do we see during orgasm?, and expands from Barthes semiotic “stroke of bliss.”  ChromOrgasm can be interpreted as the need to compare and comprehend color via the biological want of the sex drive:  the obsessive need to see color and to have more of it--similar to our American  drives for money, material, and power.

               ChromOrgasm encompasses certain sociopolitical and holistic constructs and aligns itself with systems thinking, Bohm’s holographic paradigm,  and Varela's biological embodiment of color.  Included are that romantic  color must fall within the accepted social fabric to continue,  otherwise it ceases to be visible.   Color follows certain social codes and norms,  and that these access and marginalization codes must be broken.    Color  is most often defined and categorized by a small group of humans in order for its organizational usage to take place in an capitalist society.   These groups occupy and control the historical development and the institutional memory of  our biochromatic conditioning.   Color is defined as geographic, inherent in the choices made by  local and global situations,  and is  a  biologically embodied  phenomenon closely linked to our creative and reproductive capabilities.   

            Finally, ChromOrgasm defines color as a power distributor and  power  as a  distributor of color.   This paper questions color’s innate connection to power and highlights  ongoing problems inherent with teaching and creating color  as they are broken down into interdisciplinary categories. Each category is a  color sortie--where color is juxtaposed with power and looked at through comparative lens.

• Outline:  Topic/Category   Image A  Image B
• Intro:   Multiple Color Vectors 

Introduction:  Color Sortie:   Multiple Color Vectors          

            The artist’s romance with color has long been a seductive one.  From the sensual shape-shifting  quality of color to its  adaptive and assimilative properties, color often seduces the visual culture producer into a dangerous relationship.  Frequently, as an artist flirts with his desire to manipulate color,  he begins to develop  a  power struggle with  the hidden hierarchical structure of color and its interlocutors.  Yet the deception of traditional theoretical primary systems, arbitrary linguistical associations, curatorial coding,  and egotistical career decisions frequently restrain  artistic use of color. 

            The relative nature of color has often titillated visual practitioners with its broad spectrum and wide array of scientific, psychological, historical, cultural and philosophic phenomena.  But the multiple functions and definitions of color and its interdisciplinary capacities  as a mode of expression often confuse both viewer and creator.  What preconditions, preconceptions and prejudices in our personal environs mold the spatiality of our color creations?

             For color to exist it must occupy multiple interdisciplinary vectors moving at multiple interdisciplinary velocities.  In opening our minds to a field as broad as color,  we must be willing to think  in multiple systems, which offer new ways of looking at color --beyond linear  planes to nonlinear vector potentials.     Similar to the writers Foucault, Chomsky,  Deleuze, or Said, who have described power historically, linguistically,  psychologically and politically--we must cross disciplines and compare  visual boundaries and literary territories to get to the multiple truths of color.

             Batchelor's  book  Chromophobia  reinvigorates some of the age old issues of color.  His main argument is based on the “fear or corruption of colour” within western culture, and  questions our prejudice and our need to control color and its control of us (Batchelor, inset cover).   This paper questions colors innate connection to power and highlights its ongoing problems inherent with teaching and creating color,  as they are broken down into interdisciplinary categories. Each grouping in this lecture is a  color sortie--where color is juxtaposed with power and looked at through comparative eyes. 

Run Video clip: Birdcage

Begin Slides. 

Works Cited (Presentation Order)

Barthes, Roland. In  Riley, Charles.  Color Codes, London: UP of New England, p. 60-61.

Batchelor, David.  Chromaphobia.  London:  Reaktion Books, 2000, inset cover.

Birdcage. Nichols, Mike (Director).  United Artists, 1996. (video)

Stay tuned for the next ChromOrgasm Blog Series color sortie!  
With a chromatically adaptive smile, pete