A CyclicalFrame of Mind — Chromatic

Joseph TanPattern project

Concept

The illusion that the brain creates is a form of ghost; a supernatural phenomenon that happen when a new image is created and exists apart from reality.

In this project, I use the ambiguous zone of light to create an ex-tended space by which a ‘ghost’ can exist.

Artist ReferenceThe artist I referred to is James Turrell who uses Light as his medium to construct his art.

He believes that Art exists in an extended space that is beyond the physical realm. He believes that Light not only defines space, he uses Light to do sculpture.

Artist ReferenceAnother artist I look at is Olafur Eliasson.

He too, questions the way we see. The main theme of his art revolves around the idea of questioning the difference between looking at a picture and experiencing a space.

http://www.ted.com/talks/olafur_eliasson_playing_with_space_and_light.html

Project TitleA Cyclical Frame of Mind

Personal Project Brief

In this project, I aim to duplicate two ideology of James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson on print.

The first is to create a pattern that extends beyond the physical space.

The second is to use print (a reflected light; 2D image) to create architecture.

Initial IdeasCell Patterns

Cells have a very interesting repetition of organic motif and is very interesting to study its form. Furthermore, cells are closely related to physical being. The cells could be edited to give a ghostly impression.

Initial IdeasGhostly Grey Dots

Ghostly grey dots is one of the first thing that intrigued me in science class. It was actually named ghostly grey dots in my science textbook.

This optical illusion could also be explored to show a su-pernatural pattern.

Initial IdeasMelted Candles

Melted candles are a really common sight in the 7th month Chinese Ghost Festival.

Melted candle arts could also be studied and explored to create an organic pattern work. It could perhaps be vectorized and layered upon each other to create a new composition.

Initial IdeasMultiple Shadows

The shadow art by Olafur Eliasson questions the way we see. The white color that is formed by light on the screen is actually made up of Red Blue and Green. When an object is placed between, the colors mix to form Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. It is quite an interesting idea to question what we see and what we do not see. What we think we see and what actually is.

Initial IdeasSmoke Art

Smoke is also very prevalent in the Chinese hungry ghost festival.

The Joss stick is actually food for the ghost. The smoke suggests the ghost consuming his food.

We can look into the smoke to create some sort of pattern.

Initial IdeasIdealisation

IdealisationThe project takes on the idea of the Modular Pattern of Cells and the idea of Optical illusion of the Ghostly Grey Dots.

Initial IdeasExperimentation

Color Optical IllusionStudy of how color could be used to create optical illusion that moves to simulate Ghostly encounter.

Initial IdeasExperimentation

GestaltStudy of how gestalt theory can help us create ghostly objects

Initial IdeasExperimentation

Water ShadowStudy of how reflection of water and its movement can create a ghostly feel.

Initial IdeasExperimentation

Halftone OpticalStudy of how reducing of color pigments on an image allow the image to be recognizable yet ghostly.

Primary ResearchDuplicating James Turrell’s ‘Crater Roden’ and Olafur Elisi-asson’s ‘The Weather Project’ to create an illusion of space.

Pigment is different from natural light. Pigment is reflected light. In this piece, the intention is for the viewer to view this in a room that is very dimly lighted.

The result was not very ideal. The optical illusion wasn’t very obvious.

HalftoneUsing half tone on Photoshop to create a pattern and also to create more white spaces for light to reflect, the result was better.

MotifUsing this as the atom for my cellular construct, I constructed various experiments.

White RingThe White Ring combines 3 Color, Cyan Magenta and Yel-low together to form a very strong white ‘Light’ illusion. Taking a closer look, we realize also, that the three colors form black as well that allows the eye to think that the white is more white because of the strong contrast.

The TriadThe Triad is a typical combination of the colors Cyan Magenta and Yellow. However, instead of layering the colors to create the secondary colors, it creates the second layer of color by making the viewer’s eye ‘work out’ the illustionment of the secondary color. It uses the similar concept of how LED lights work.

DecagoncircaA Deacagon is a ten sided figure. Decagoncirca is a color study of repeating the circular motif ten times, adjusting the Opacity, Hue and Position to create an illustionment and observation of how one sees.

It is similar to James Turrell’s ideology of making his audi-ence ‘See themselves seeing’. Decagoncirca allows the audience to study and see for themselves how the eye works when viewing color.

Project Technique ResearchHalftone

Half ToneHalftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continu-ous tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size, in shape or in spacing.

Left: Halftone dots. Right: How the human eye would see this sort of arrangement from a sufficient distance.

Halftone DotsWhere continuous tone imagery contains an infinite range of colors or greys, the halftone process reduces visual reproductions to an image that is printed with only one color of ink, in dots of dif-fering size. This reproduction relies on a basic optical illusion—that these tiny halftone dots are blended into smooth tones by the hu-man eye. At a microscopic level, developed black-and-white pho-tographic film also consists of only two colors, and not an infinite range of continuous tones.

Three examples of color halftoning with CMYK separations. From left to right: The cyan separation, the magenta separation, the yellow separation, the black separation, the combined halftone pattern and finally how the human eye would observe the combined halftone pattern from a sufficient distance.

Color HalftoningJust as color photography evolved with the addition of filters and film layers, color printing is made possible by repeating the half-tone process for each subtractive color—most commonly using what is called the “CMYK color model”. The semi-opaque property of ink allows halftone dots of different colors to create another op-tical effect—full-color imagery.

When different screens are combined, a number of distracting visual effects can occur, including the edges being overly empha-sized, as well as a moiré pattern. This problem can be reduced by rotating the screens in relation to each other. This screen angle is another common measurement used in printing, measured in degrees clockwise from a line running to the left (9 o’clock is zero degrees).Halftoning is also commonly used for printing color pictures. The general idea is the same, by varying the density of the four sec-ondary printing colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black (abbrevia-tion CMYK), any particular shade can be reproduced.[10]In this case there is an additional problem that can occur. In the simple case, one could create a halftone using the same tech-niques used for printing shades of grey, but in this case the differ-ent printing colors have to remain physically close to each other to fool the eye into thinking they are a single color. To do this the industry has standardized on a set of known angles, which result in the dots forming into small circles or rosettes.The dots cannot easily be seen by the naked eye, but can be dis-cerned through a microscope or a magnifying glass.

While the angles depend on how many colors are used and the preference of the press operator, typical CMYK process printing uses any of the following screen angles

For this project, the screen angles I have experimented with is, 45, 90, 162 and 108.

Screen angleIn offset printing the colors are output on separate lithographic plates. Failing to use the correct set of angles to output every color may lead to some kind of optical noise called moiré patterns. These patterns look like some bands or waves that mostly lead to unpleasant look of the final print. There is another disadvantage associated with incorrect sets of angle values, i.e. the colors will look dimmer due to overlapping. There are many sets of screen angles such as (15° for Cyan, 75° for Magenta, 0° for Yellow and 45° for Black). The problem is that these angles can only be achieved theoretically (except for 45° angle). Other angles are output ap-proximately, but will produce the desired effect.

Research BibliographyBann, David. The All New Print Production Handbook. RotoVision SA. Page One Publishing Private Limited, 2006. Print.

Faraco, João. “Illustrator Tutorial - Vector Halftone Effect”. 2012. Apr 3, 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kzx_jMQChc>.

Campbell, Alastair. The Designer’s Lexicon. ©2000 Chronicle, San Francisco.

McCue, Claudia. Real World Print Production. 2007 Peachpit, Berke-ley. p 31.

Triple Blend PixelsThis work is an advancement of The Triad.

It works to blend three primary colors together. Making use of the computer pixels, as opposed to the round half-tone, this work aims to study how colors blend together.

ChromaticThis work is a advancement of White Ring.

Using the research from the Halftone study, the augment-ing the angles accordingly, a more interesting blending of pattern is formed.

This work, called Chromatic, is an opposition to the seem-ingly monochromatic nature of the piece at far sight. However, when looked up close, one can notice that it is actually made up of colors. More than that, the colors have a pattern the blends themselves in a way that cause the eyes to see the shades of grey when it is more than meets the eye.

Green Witch’s CauldronThis experiment changes the size of the halftone that layers upon each other.

Mainly, the Red dots are made bigger and more prominent. The result is an optical illusion that seems to be a green aura that comes out of a portal.

The Second ChromaticThis work is a advancement of the first Chromatic.

This pattern is made by adding 3 halftones on top of each other. They are Green, Orange and Purple.

The second Chromatic gives a more ‘Metallic’ look as oppose to the first one. This is probably because the secondary colors are more ‘loaded’ in terms of colors; as in Green is made up of two colors instead of 1, unlike the pure Cyan for instance. Hence, Second Chromatic has greater value in its tone.

The Greater ChromaticThis work is a advancement of the chromatic series.

This is done by adding all Primary colors and Secondary colors together.

It creates a very interesting bronze metallic color instead of a neutral ‘black’ shade that we expect. This could per-haps be a result of the layering and the control of opacity amongst the layer. From the close up swatch below, we can see that it actually has more red color hues.

It is interesting to note the color the pigments make, be-cause it is actually a very sophisticated color to get on print.

CandyThis work is made up of Orange, Magenta and Cyan half-tones. It is a celebration of the primary color Magenta, using Cyan as a contrasting color and Orange as an Analogous.

It Creates a familiar color palette that is found commonly in candy wrappings.

Turquoise SeaThis work is made up of Orange and Cyan.

The interesting color experiments leading up to Turquoise Sea made me realize that this whole exercise allows me to mix and match colors in a new way.

If I want to create a Turquoise hue, I could use a low opaque orange hue to blend it instead of green. This opens up a whole new way which colors could be made.

Crumble CrunchLike 'Candy', Crumble Crunch is made up of Hues that are close to the Magenta. They are Magenta, Orange, Cyan and Purple.

The complex combination of colors resulted in less white spac-es than there could have been, making the composition higher in its value.

The complex pattern and augmented screen angles make the swatch seem broken and inconsistent; like a tower that is about to crumble.

Spotted OrangeThis work is made up of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and a big-ger Orange halftone that overlays it.

When seen closely, this pattern seem to be covered with Orange spots. Not only is there a filter of Orange that is obviously layered on top of it, we can also observe that this orange filter is spotty, like a ‘pixelized’ filter.

We can quite easily notice it because the pattern of the Orange is easily distinct from the smaller ones.

Two FaceThis work is done by placing a bigger Purple halftone layer and bigger Green halftone layer over the Cyan, Ma-genta and Yellow halftones.

The layers with larger dots created a gradient of colors as it blends together towards the middle. This is because, by design, the dots get smaller towards the centre.

Two face is not only a pretty blend of colors, but it also help us truly understand how a printer works when it is commanded to print a gradient.

Metallic GoldThis work is made by layering Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and a very transparent big, black halftone pattern.

Similarly, the complex hue and tone of this color is pretty difficult to mix on print but can be produced accurately through this method.

The black halftone creates also a faint spotted pattern that intrigues the eyes.

Off-ToneThis work is made by having a large Yellow halftone pat-tern over magenta and yellow.

This resulted in a very interesting gradient. Two things are happening here.

Firstly, the greater Yellow dots fills the white spots and create an old-yellowish filter, especially prevalent in what use to be a white space in the middle.

Secondly, Because the Yellow spots are now bigger and more unsaturated, it no longer work with Magenta and Cyan to form Black, but instead, a purple gradient can be seen to form.

Further StudiesArtist Research

Artist ResearchOn further research, I have found three artists that have similar work concepts.

These artist uses modular constructivism as a primary work technique, similar to the idea behind Halftone.

Peter Zimmermann’s work clearly shows his understanding and research into printing and halftone. How additive color blending works.

Liz Deschenes uses color half tone to form optical illusion, that creates movement in a 2D art. This is also similar in the work that I try to implement in my patter work. However, in-stead of using multicoloured, the choice of using only black and adjusting the screen angles, this artist’s work works bet-ter in creating an optical illusion.

Andres Gursky’s work might not be that similar in its form, but it is closely related in concept. Moreover, he has brought the idea of modular constructivism forward, into investigat-ing how modular repetition work out in a 3D space.

Peter ZimmermannL-Raster, 2003 by Peter Zimmermann

Liz DeschenesMoiré #25

Andreas GurskyHamm – Bergwerk Ost, 2008Kamiokande, 2007Dance Valley, 1995F1 Boxenstopp I, 2007

ChormaticThe final product of this project is chromatic.

Chromatic was chosen as it is one of the most basic study in the list of pattern swatches.

It is simplest in showing the idea of a ‘Ghost’ or Optical Illusion in our minds that create something for us that is not there.

No amount of Black was used in creating Chromatic, only the primary colors of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, but through the use of halftones and adjustment of screen angles, we are able to get a gradient of different shades of grey.

This phenomenon is not only intriguing to the mind but can be said as Supernatural as we let ourselves be amaze by the won-derful world of colors, the pigments our eyes compute to our brains as we continue to wonder and fathom what is our world truly made of.

A Cyclical Frame of MindPattern Swatches