8|APUNTES Color Wheels: An art installation that explores color and light perception In general, every time we look at something we are not aware of it, but the light falls directly in the formation of the color image before us. This is the purpose of the piece Color Wheels, created by the lighting designers Aleksandra Stratimirovic and Athanassios Danilof. The project, presented during the last edition of the Frankfurt Fair, shows different circles that change the tone and intensity color depending on the degree of light that they receive. In its background, are hidden multiple theories about the creation of color developed throughout history by scientists, artists and scholars. iCandela talked to the authors to understand better this piece. Q: How was born the idea of the project? A: Color Wheels is a light art installation created as a perceptual instrument to investigate the experience of color and light through temporal luminous color arrangements. It draws its initial inspiration from the enthralling history of color research. Artists, scientists and scholars ranging from Leon Battista Alberti, Phillip Otto Runge and Johaness Itten to Isaac Newton, Hermann von Helmholtz and J.W. von Goethe have developed different theories and approaches to understand and categorize color. An emblematic form in this process has been the color wheel and its many interpretations. Q: You made an investigation about the theory of the color in the history. Which is your favorite author or theory of the color and why it is? A: Color has been approached throughout the years by diverse academic disciplines (physics, visual arts, psychology etc). In fact, this is one of its main characteristics: its “ability” to enchant researchers throughout the branches of knowledge. Therefore it wouldn’t be fair to pick out one researcher. We named a few above that we found interesting in different fields of study. All those individual and different approaches inspire us to find our own way to explore, experience and understand color. Color Wheels is a triptych that initially generates a minimal and basic physical environment. Each section consists of six circles that are engaged in a concentric layered layout. As the subtle light sequence evolves the visual experience is stimulated by successive brightness, hue and saturation hierarchies of reflected light on each circle. The perceptual