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Nature's fluctuating colour captured on canvas?

Having worked on adapting iridescent technology from its inception, gradual emergence and now rapid expansion, the author traces the sustained effort necessary on her part to overcome the many inherent challenges. Interweaving the findings of art theory, physics and personal studio practice, an attempt is made to position the new technology within the wider discourse on colour. And readers are furnished with an increased understanding of the scientific and aesthetic principles governing iridescence. Scientific and practice-based research conducted as part of the AHRC-funded Art & Science project ‘Sea Change’ (2007) and subsequently during secondment at the University of Birmingham (2008) partly informed this work. However, extensive complementary scholarly research into the wider discourse on colour (both in science and art) was also carried out and incorporated - the aim being to begin to formulate an ‘aesthetics of iridescence’.

This innovative journal article/chapter not only introduces the reader to the new colour technology (its origin, optics and aesthetics), but also demonstrates by way of illustration, how it can be applied creatively. In addition, it also puts the author’s work on iridescence in the wider context (both historical and contemporary) of related artistic practice and scholarly research.

This work was first presented at an interdisciplinary conference on Colour held at Edinburgh Academy (24 Oct 08) http://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/~clive/Colour.pdf), which subsequently led to an article being commissioned for the Journal of Design & Nature’s special issue on Colour in Art, Design and Nature (2009). In 2011, the elven papers by “leading figures from the world of art, design and the natural sciences presenting their most recent work on Colour” were republished, in full colour, as a book of the same name.