Color
Human beings are able to distinguish minute
variations in color. Vilém Flusser found the
idea exciting that colors might provide a means
to bring together scientic (rational, causal)
thinking and aesthetic experience in a new phenomenological
communication form which could
produce revolutionary new (negentropic) information
in society. Particularly important for this
theory is the notion that colors are quantiable
and are calculable using computers. Computers
can make very ne quantitative distinctions between
colors enabling new color languages that
articulate qualitatively new forms of life.
Colors, programmable by computers, appear to
herald new modalities of transforming the world
through technical means. Flusser, in his extensive
correspondence with the Swiss graphic designer
and typographer Karl Gerstner, predicted
an impending age where phosphorescent bunnies
will hop around in purple meadows, a form
of biological “painting” through the mathematical
computation of genetic materials.
In a letter to Gerstner, Flusser wrote: “[…] color
is no longer taken to be content of form but a
primary constituent of form. Alternative to the
traditional Kantian ‘Anschauungsformen’ timespace
[is] now time-color.” (Correspondence
with Karl Gerstner, January 29, 1989)
There is much ambiguity in Flusser’s enthusiasm: the endless yet precise manipulation of color values made possible by computers is presented as the harbinger of complete mastery of all matter through programmable devices. Colors, although not existing physically, co-constitute the world, and since computers can manipulate them precisely, computers can ostensibly reconstitute the world to serve our needs.
Original article by Baruch Gottlieb in Flusseriana