Beyond Digital: colour, painting and computing

In this paper I discuss ongoing research into the relationship of digital colour to analogue colour, through the physical and perceptual experience of making paintings. How can printed computer colour match the output of painting with pigments? How can digital colour work in relation to analogue colour within the same picture? The paper refers to the study I have made of ‘simulated’ and actual paint-colour, where the paint is applied directly to digitally printed canvas. The study includes the referencing of the perceptual behaviour and material characteristics of each, as they are combined and contrasted in the same pictorial format.

The paper also refers to Chromafile, a software program I have co- designed with Dr Ferdy Carabott. It is a simulated paint-colour palette I use in the creation of painted, screen-printed and digitally printed pictures. Chromafile relates virtual with material by providing a common colour language for the painted and printed images. The project is to apply theoretical and computer-based research to creative, material-practice. The tension and dynamic in the research process is between the technical, ‘scientific’ model used for the Chromafile project, and my customary, singular and personal approach to painting aimed at action and expression, the immediate sensory experience that goes beyond knowledge and ideas.

I have established a new working method of involving the two technologies in the production of new bodies of work. In the broad development of a ‘Beyond Digital’ project, which includes software and material artefacts, the practical solutions and experimental data have relevance wherever there is an established or potential use of digital printing or where varied printed substrates are part of the output.

This research has subsequently been developed (04-07) to VIRTUAL and MATERIAL: an ongoing project which explores the relationship between designs, digital printing, (via the Chromafile programme), and fabric manipulation.

• Publisher