Oct. 28 - Nov. 4, 2021
Partners: Anya, Ava, Bala, Effy, Ella
Brief: Design an experience based on the characteristics of the colour yellow.
Research Methods: Creative Toolkit and Artefact Analysis
"The sun dazzles me and goes to my head, a sun, a light that I can only call yellow, sulfur yellow, lemon yellow, golden yellow. How lovely yellow is!” - Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo
“Bright yellow wounds the eyes, the eye cannot bear it: one thinks of the ear-splitting sound of a trumpet. It irritates, stings, excites. … Yellow torments man, it imposes itself on him like a constraint, intruding with a kind of unbearable brutality.” - Wassily Kandinsky
These two quotes illustrate the range of emotions that yellow can elicit, depending on its particular hue and saturation. Sometimes it can be a sickly neon highlighter color, or, on the other end of the spectrum, it can provide a warm, comforting swathe of color to an otherwise dull interior space. How exactly could we express the characteristics of yellow? The first thing I wanted to do was consider its affordances.
Affordances of Color
In "Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication," (2001) Kress and Van Leeuwen argue that "signifiers, and therefore also colors, carry a set of affordances from which sign-makers and interpreters select according to their communicative needs and interests in a given context. In some cases their choice will be highly regulated by explicit or implicit rules, or by the authority of experts and role models. In other cases, for instance in the production and interpretation of art, it will be relatively free" (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 355)
Kress and Van Leeuwen distinguish between two types of affordance in color, or as they say, "two sources for making meaning with color."
The first affordance is that of association, or the cultural and historical meaning of the color. They write, "First there is association, or provenance – the question of ‘where the colour comes from, where it has been culturally and historically’, ‘where we have seen it before’" (ibid).
The second type of affordance is more of a technical examination of color, such as its saturation, value, purity, or hue. The features are not organized as structural oppositions but "as values on a range of scales" (ibid).
This background reading on the affordances of color gave us a more grounded approach to start thinking about yellow.
Initial Brainstorming
During our first group meeting, we thought of the main characteristics of yellow. The words that came to mind were joy, warmth, and light. However, we did not want to settle on initial associations and wished to delve deeper into other definitions of yellow to see if we could discover another facet of yellow that we hadn't considered before. To get our gears turning, we decided on different characteristics of yellow to research for our artefact analysis.
They were the following:
Anya - Tea
Ava - Smiley emoji/balloon
Bala - Gold
Effy - Pinwheel
Ella - Paint
Vicki - Cowardice
Artefact Analysis: Yellow and Cowardice
I wanted to find out more about the symbolism of yellow and cowardice.
In "Yellow: The History of a Color," Michel Pastoureau explains the negative connotations of yellow through the examples of language events and lexicon. He writes, "[i]n French and in Italian, a 'yellow' (jaune, giallo) is a traitor; in English slang, a 'yellow dog' refers to a cowardly person, a 'chicken,' and since the 1900s, 'yellow journalism' describes newspapers disseminating gossip and scandal ('scandal sheets')" (Pastoureau, 2019). It became clear from these examples that yellow has a long history of being associated with treachery, cowardice, and disrepute for several centuries.
Later on, I realized that I should have chosen an actual material for the artefact analysis rather than something intangible. Nevertheless, we still found it helpful to learn about the symbolism behind yellow and cowardice, as cowardice is not a trait with positive connotations. This research opened up the field of definitions of yellow to include potentially "negative" associations.
Insanity
'it has a disturbing influence and reveals an insistent, aggressive character ... it may be paralleled, in human nature, with madness, not with melancholy or hypochondriacal mania, but rather with violent, raving lunacy’ - Kandinsky (1977) (Kress and Van Leuwen, 2001, p. 353)
Effy brought up the story The Yellow Wallpaper, in which a woman slowly goes insane after her husband locks her up in a room and she begins to see shapeshifting figures in the wall. We also thought of the artist Yayoi Kusama and her work with clashing colors and trypophobia. We wanted to think of ways in which we could represent this insanity and to make an experience of stepping in and out of the wallpaper.
Soon after, we realized that there are many different types of insanity and that we should focus in on one of them. For example, what would be the spatial experience of jealousy?
In trying to represent yellow and insanity, we thought of different experiences that would drive someone mad. We were conscious of thinking in a multimodal manner, not just in a visual sense but also playing with sound and light, such as the hum or crackle of a lightbulb. Some ideas that we came up with were a jigsaw puzzle and treasure hunt, but we were also wary of "gamifying" the experience too much.
Tutorial
From our tutorial, we gathered that the distance between our idea and outcome was too short. There wasn't much room to expand or go deeper.
Takeaway: develop the concept further!
We also should consider the staging of the experience and differentiating between an experience or method rather than a toolkit. Some key words we wanted to remember were: review, make, experiment, and test.
Yellow and Frustration
After our tutorial, we wanted to get to experimenting straight way, so we quickly decided to zero in on frustration because insanity was too wide of a concept. We agreed that frustration arises when we try to achieve a task but run into some sort of obstacle.
Frustration Toolkit
For our toolkit, we decided to have the volunteer undertake a series of frustrating tasks. In order to prompt frustration we decided to test three different tasks or experiences: a fully yellow jigsaw, a yellow piece puzzle and a beaded bracelet.
After running a series of tests, we would be able to learn which was the more frustrating task. A question that remained in our heads was how can we even measure something as abstract as frustration?
The first game we tried out was the yellow jigsaw puzzle, where we cut off parts of the puzzle, so it was impossible to finish. The yellow piece puzzle has a similar concept, but it was a bit more difficult, whereas the beaded bracelet was the most difficult one. We wanted to gradually increase the difficulty to build up the frustration. We quickly noticed that the tools for the puzzle were too easy until we brought in a cone to diminish the field of vision. We decided to ask the volunteer to string together the beads, which was already a challenging task from the very beginning.
Toolkit
This is what we came up with for our toolkit:
Experience Instructions
One continuous task:
Make a bracelet with the beads, spell out the word “communication” by putting the beads on to the elastic provided.
This is a timed exercise. We will tell you when to move on to the next step. Experience Steps:
Put the beads on the elastic with no extra hindrances (20 seconds)
Then feel the wind (1 minute)
Now put on the gloves (1 minute)
Finally put the cone over your face (the cone needs to cover both of your eyes) (2 minutes, 40 seconds)
Feedback
After our presentation in class, we received feedback that the experience felt convoluted and that it seemed like we were looking at distraction rather than frustration. In other words, we had strayed quite far from the topic of yellow. From the feedback, we saw our project with fresh eyes and realized how important it is to get outside input. Sometimes under the stress of deadlines and needing to produce something quickly, we can settle on topics without thinking them through.
Tutorial
During our tutorial, we talked about color filtration and the color additive spectrum. John also encouraged us to think about the why? behind our experiences. What is the point of the experience? He also helped us realize that it is okay to get things wrong in a productive way; we don't need to land on a perfect prototype the first time, every time.
We went back to the drawing board and really zeroed in on yellow itself. From there, we started thinking more about the physical properties of yellow, its molecular components, frequency, and wavelengths.
What I Learned
1. Try not to jump too quickly into designing the prototype without a strong concept at the beginning. Otherwise, the experience will feel rushed and underdeveloped.
2. It is possible to make mistakes in a productive way. Our mistakes/missteps can still provide insight and guide our direction forward.
3. Finally, our classmates are also a resource and can provide us with fresh eyes and helpful input.
Bibliography
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