Happy New Year! Nothing like a new calendar year to force you to complete last year’s “to do list”, and posting this footage from the Summer was on there….definitely a favourite 2013 moment.
So you’ve read our little mission statement, right? While it’s important to listen to and experience the special mood evoked in each raga, colour is important in many ways around here. Do you have enough in your life? Living online, we never get real colour. No colour on a computer screen is complete.
Being a sound guy, colour gamut is a concept I picked up only recently via this Michael Scroggins (of Single Wing Turquoise Bird) video (below). Essentially the term refers to “the complete set of colors found within an image at a given time” [1], and often its usage describes the limitations of a device or medium to reproduce that full spectrum of colour. How curious that the term came from music…
The video is great, especially if you have an interest in Californian counter-culture in the ’60s – I was always curious about the Hog Farm that is always referred to when mentioning Wavy Gravy. But I’m happy to cut to the chase here, as it illustrates lightsweetcrude’s preoccupation with liquid light projections: “These dyes and the overhead projector gave you a colour gamut you couldn’t get off of film, off of video or slides – it was really intense.”
I honestly wasn’t aware that this was behind the unusual intensity experienced when seeing liquids projected on a wall… Even just food colouring on some transparencies. Colour affects us, and the purity of colour might be an important factor in its effect.
You should really get your eyes off your screen for a bit today, and experience some green in a wooded area, or at least the sky – that might be the longest standing source of great colour going for our species. It’s interesting that they say when planning a meal to “colour your plate”. Getting some colour into your life everyday is as important as eating your veggies.
Photo credit: Paola Martinez Hernandez 5-26-2012
Photo: projection on the wall at lightsweetcrude HQ.
