Abstract
I regularly teach an intensive color practice course for students of theater design with the double goal of stretching their eyes and improving their ability to communicate about color. Faced with the challenge of teaching color remotely while separated by distance and screen distortion, I rediscovered a way of teaching color by anchoring our observations in material-color-as-a-function-of-sunlight and in natural phenomena such as shadows, reflections, ambient light, and temperature. The new curriculum amplified experiential learning away from the screen and its pitfalls. When teaching color in person, I rely on group discussions as a critical component of recognizing and articulating color nuance because seeing color is intertwined with verbalizing observations in a group context. In this case, I shifted the discovery and articulation of color nuance to their individual spaces by asking each student to set up their own color and light “Laboratory” where they observed and documented material color in response to sunlight. Emboldened to stage their own experiments in their unique circumstances and according to disciplinary interest (students included theater designers/architects/industrial engineers), students made color discoveries rooted in an understanding of light, and developed awareness of the relationship between color and materiality. “Laboratories” observed the color temperature of shadows outside, the shifting color saturation of a landscape as a function of daylight, the color of someone’s red hair under different lighting conditions, the behavior of structural color from various angles of observation, and even explored what constitutes a shadow, among other subjects.
Presenters
Anya KlepikovAssistant Professor of Scenic Design, Theater, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
COLOR, LIGHT, SUNLIGHT, SEEING, OBSERVATION, SHADOWS, EXPERIMENTATION, EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING, SCIENCE
