Read about LIGHT, COLOUR, VISION and SEEING MORE in our growing library of hand-crafted essays

Find an explanation for any of the family of terms we use to talk about LIGHT, COLOUR and VISION

Kia ora to all our friends, supporters and visitors

It is now 2 months since we launched lightcolourvision.org and completed the crowdfunding campaign. Thank you for settling your pledges. We massively appreciate your support 🙂

UNIQUE VISITORS LAST MONTH

As you can see,  the number of visitors is growing steadily with almost 8,000 unique visits in July. We are not yet tracking what happens once visitors arrive but two things are worth looking into:

• Visitors who find what they need must be cutting and pasting or using Save Image As – there is no sign that our own download options are being used.
• We are not receiving comments or feedback on the site. This is partly due to the plugin we were using being withdrawn. We are looking for a replacement!

COMPLETED LAST MONTH

1. All the diagrams across the site have been updated to ensure they use a consistent design and to improve the information they contain. It’s been a major task with 124 images edited in total. Uploading the results is underway.
2. The HOME PAGE has been updated. Feedback suggested that it was not immediately obvious what the site is about. Some of the terms in the menus have been altered and more explanatory information added below headings.

PRIORITIES THIS MONTH

1. Upload four more Articles. They are all complete drafts but need more exacting editing.
2. Complete the written explanations for all RESOURCES pages.
3. Instal a plugin to add Wikipedia entries to all the REFERENCES pages.
4. Instal a plugin that allows us to add a DONATIONS option to the site with a secure payments gateway.

FREE GIFT

We are preparing a gift to send out to all our friends and supports. You can see one of them below. When it arrives, simply drag the file icon into a new browser window (except Internet Explorer) then visit the tab anytime you want to zone out as the pattern unfolds. (Don’t miss out, subscribe to the Newsletter under the MORE tab at the top of the page).

SITE DEVELOPMENT

A quick look at lightcolourvision.org today suggests that the site is primarily concerned with light, colour and vision, not least with:

• The physics of light and associated phenomena
• The sensation, organization and application of colour in various contexts, not least digital tech
• The mechanics of vision in terms of biological and neurological investigations

But the inclusion of the bi-line and ways of seeing more provides a clue to future plans. To understand where we hope to go with the site, it helps to have a sense of where we have come from.

The site has its origins in the research Jules and I were able to immerse ourselves in during our MA studies at AUT University, Auckland. The outcome for Jules was a body of photographic work entitled Touching a Sensibility: A Photographic Exploration of Haptic Experience and for me Living Events: A Metaphor for Design, a 110-page thesis.

Inevitably, the outcomes for both of us took the form of evidence rather than an explanation of our separate creative journeys, so there was no opportunity to link the work with the frames of reference others rely on to make sense of the world. In practice, it has taken the better part of a decade for the two of us to come to terms with the fact that both of our bodies of work represent different cartographic investigations of a single landscape and how they overlap.

The common ground emerged during a subsequent period of research when we had the opportunity to spend 5 months of 2017 at Tate Modern in the UK where we focused on the idea that, in any situation, there is always more to see and understand, but that the key question concerns the prerequisites to trigger such a process of seeing more.

Subsequently, our efforts have been focused, in immediate terms, on how to share a decade of research with Jules’ students, particularly her year 13 Scholarship students. The website meanwhile reaches out to a larger audience.

As it stands, the website contains resources that aim to convey a contemporary understanding of light, colour and vision. Seen together they convey how related fields of scientific investigation demonstrate a theory of seeing that underpins a common-sense understanding of how we perceive the world. A theory? Yes! It is a theory in the sense that none of what is known about light, colour and vision is actually evident as we all look around, see the world and locate ourselves within it. We just see stuff, whilst the mechanics of how is not directly evident.

Once we are confident that we have covered enough of the conceptual framework around light, colour and vision to be useful to site visitors, we will start to introduce another kind of content. The new material will introduce competing theories, not least ones that have emerged from our own research.

[To be continued in our next newsletter.]

KEEP IN TOUCH

Thank you for reading this Newsletter. We would love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts 🙂 Ric Mann. August 2019.