Color erosion. Inks and dyes in the pixel era

In his first color film, Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni showed the effects of chemical pollution over an industrial landscape through the experience of the main character, a woman affected by a nervous syndrome that altered her senses. Visually, the film is characterized by the continual appearance of elements with striking colors that introduce in the image the synthetic and toxic substances present in the atmosphere of the industrial plant. Colors, visible on painted surfaces, clothes or gas emissions, appear as active agents that leave the surface of objects to invade the space and characterize the mental state, health and relationships of people within it.

This paper presents my research on color as an agent that materializes the action of another industry, the IT one. From the point of view of the digitalization processes of objects and images, every color surface can be addressed as an information surface, susceptible to being recodified in real time through a large number of techniques, and its colors changed consequently. In my last works I have explored the use of projections and overprints of grids of benday dots to digitally modify the perceived colors on objects. This paper presents these projects -Vividness, Chromogeny and L’image est une machine malade– contextualized in relation to the theoretical work of Esther Leslie, historian of art, around the history of the production of synthetic colors.

Abelardo Gil-Fournier is an artist and researcher. His work is settled around the crossings between the abstraction of systems and the specificness of social and cultural objects. His projects are elaborated as platforms  -installations, data visualizations, tools, games and workshops- that mimic open laboratories in order to distort the production process.

Some of his work has been developed in artist residencies in Laboral Center of Art (Gijón) and the spanish broadcast television Canal+, or as commissions of institutions such as Intermediae in Madrid, CROMAFest in Mexico DF or the open hardware company Ultra-lab. Some of his projects have been shown in international collective exhibitions and festivals (US, France, Sweden, Spain) and reviewed in mainstream blogs (BoingBoing, wmmna). He has taught workshops on creative coding and game design in several countries (Spain, France, Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador).  Additionally, he collaborates continuously with other artists or collectives, such as Maria Andueza, Raúl Alaejos, Daniel
García Andújar or Culturambiente.