Book 9

Color Perception

by Steven Davis

Published 27 July 2000
Colour has been studied for centuries, but remains incompletely understood. Digital technology has recently sparked a burgeoning inter-disciplinary interest in colour. Graphic artists prefer to create their images on computers even though colours seen on display look different when printed; galleries now digitally archive valuable work. The fundamental problem that arises is that colour reproduction is not simply a matter of reproducing identical physical phenomenona, but is rather a matter of creating perceptual equivalencies. The fact that colour is a quality of perception rather than a "physical quality" brings up a host of interesting questions and makes it of common interest to both artists and scholars. This interdisciplinary volume - the ninth in the Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science series - brings together chapters by psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists and artists to explore the nature of human colour perception, and hopes to further our understanding of colour by encouraging interdisciplinary interaction.