'Even though one of the largest intercultural constructions is the agreement about what characterizes each color, there is still a large amount of individual opinion about the subject. Color has in its abstraction an enormous psychological and associative potential, and even though it has been cultivated to the extreme, the amount of individuality in experiencing colors is equally extreme. This points to the fact that color doesn’t exist in itself but only when looked at. The unique fact that color only materializes when light bounces off a surface onto our retinas shows us that the analysis of colors is, in fact, about the ability to analyze ourselves. That color is a construction, dependent on the individual, also becomes clear when we look at color constancy, which is another interesting aspect of our color perception. Scientific research shows that our experience of the colors of specific objects often is constant despite significant changes in ambient light. This means that an object looks the same to us even though its surface color may change considerably when it is, for instance, carried from one light setting into another or is placed next to a dark surface rather than a light one, and so on. In other words, for pragmatic reasons we perceive an object as being the same over time, but actually a large number of micro-transformations occur, continually negotiating the object’s relationship to its surroundings. This I find really interesting because it means that objects always shift or mutate over time, and, if we become aware of this constant movement, we may be able to understand the world as a much more open, negotiable space than we usually think it is.'
Eliasson, Olafur. Olafur Eliasson.
http://www.olafureliasson.net/exhibitions/take_your_time_2.html (accessed
2013).
—. "Some Ideas about Colour." Olafur Eliasson:
Your Colour Memory, 2006.
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