Capturing a White Cloud on a Blue Sky

EDITION

2018

school

Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (HKU)
Utrecht, The Netherlands

links

chaimdijkstra.nl ↗

Light is the octave in the whole keyboard of electromagnetic radiation, that our eyes can perceive. White light, like that of sunlight, contains all the notes of this octave. When splitting (‘refracting’) white light, we can see its component keys laid out in front of us in the form of the spectrum. With on the one hand the lowest note (or longest wavelength) the colour red, and on the other hand the highest note (or shortest wavelength) the colour violet.
In “Capturing a white cloud on a blue sky”, I expose the fundamental structure of our colour perception, by asking the question whether this structure has always been there, or that it is only there because we perceive it like that. I’m letting a film projection, which is made by three projectors, build up its own white light.
And at the same time, a self-designed camera splits white light into three separate images, each of which is one of the three building blocks of our colour perception.
Because of the nature of our visual perception, namely, it being trichromatic, we can trick our eyes into believing that all the notes of the octave are shown (white light), when in fact only red, green and blue are shown.