‘The Chromatic Illusion within the Photographic Universe’ is a practice-based research project that aims to examine the impact technology has on color rendering within the photographic.
To carry out this work, Francesco Del Conte will refer to Vilém Flusser's notions of ‘black box’ and ‘program’, and he will re-enact the scientific experiments carried out in the 1660s by Isaac Newton with sunlight and prisms. By stripping photography down to its very essence, Del Conte will seek to disclose how light-sensitive supports and output devices record and render the colors of the visible spectrum. The research will deepen the notion of ready-made colors and will explore the elementary properties of photographic matter.
The experiments will address the following questions:
- Given that color in photography is always manufactured and never merely registered, what influence does the chosen technology have on the produced color charts? Would it be possible to link different worldviews to these different color charts?
- What is the influence of a given culture on the development of color technology? Do the cultural stratifications of a geographic area determine how visual technologies decode colors?
- What remains of the chromatic heritage left by past technologies? For instance: when a certain photographic film is discontinued, is it possible to talk about extinct colors?
