The Chromatic Typewriter is a modded 1937 Underwood Standard typewriter. It was designed to paint instead of type. Artist Tyree Callahan replaced letters and keys with colored pads and labels, each with a different hue, to create a comceptual painting machine. A synesthetes dream.
I thoroughly enjoyed playing a few rounds of Chronophoto. It’s is a game in which you guess the dates of five historical photographs. The more accurate your guess, the higher your score. Each photograph has its own set of clues that give away the era — film quality, subject matter, products, uniforms, fashion, vehicles, and colorization,
My scores are all over the board, but after about 5 rounds I got a high score of 3,315. When I was wrong, I was really wrong. I did get a couple of guesses right on the spot – resulting in 1,000 points each – but being wrong is almost more interesting.
What would it be like to see a sunset on Mars? Not all that spectacular really. Interestingly, the colors of a Martian sunset are almost the opposite of a sunset here on earth with the sky being a reddish hue and the glow around the sun being blue.
Photo courtesy of NASA
This beautiful picture book by american artist Tauba Auerbach is titled RGB Colorspace Atlas. And rightfully so, for it is a complete, encyclopedic, display of the RGB gradient in a page-by-page index. The 3,632 page hardback measures 8â€x8â€x8″. It is gigantic and must have been a serious achievement for independent book binder Daniel E. Kelm at Wide Awake Garage.
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Pretty Colors is exactly what it says on the tin: a tumblr filled with pretty colors. Currently there are nearly 10,800 pretty colors posted. Under our current system only 16,777,216 colors that can be represented on the web. Given that Pretty Colors doesn’t repeat a color (which I already know they have – color #7900BC has been repeated at least 12 times already) and that it continues posting at about the same rate (which isn’t even close to consistent), the tumblr should be around for about another 1,830 years before it runs out of colors.
Photo credit: Pretty Colors
Additionally, the archive is pretty to look at too. Of course, a properly calibrated screen will be needed to bring across each color’s true prettiness.
Photo credit: Noel Carboni
The image above, click it for a wallpaper sized version, is a composite of 15 exposures digitally stitched together. According to photographer Noel Carboni:
Looking through the viewfinder I swept across the surface in a zig-zag fashion, trying for about 1/3 overlap between frames. I triggered the shutter with my TC80-N3 remote timer/controller. I did the stitching by hand in Photoshop.
Since it was taken at the camera’s most noise-free setting (ISO 100), the data is very accurate, and thus I was able to strongly increase the saturation via Photoshop’s Image – Adjust – Hue/Saturation function.
The fascinating color differences along the lunar surface are real, though highly exaggerated, corresponding to regions with different chemical compositions. And while these color differences are not visible to the eye even with a telescope, moon watchers can still see a dramatic lunar presentation tonight thanks to a fluke of orbital mechanics that brings the moon closer to Earth than that it has been in more than 18 years. At its peak, the supermoon of March 2011 may appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons. However, to the casual observer, it will probably be hard to tell the difference.
Image courtesy of mygrapefruit
When I first saw this colorized version of Malcolm Browne’s iconic image I didn’t realize it was digitally enhanced. My mind’s eye has always seen this image in color for some reason.
Mygrapefruit has done a great job adding to the photograph without taking away its ability to be beautiful, horrifying, and extremely moving.
These kaleidoscopic images are micrographs of alcoholic beverages collected by Florida State University. The images are made by crystallizing the cocktail or beer or wine on a lab slide, then passing polarized light through the crystal and magnifying it over 1000 times. As the light refracts through the beverage crystals, the resulting photos have naturally magnificent colors and composition.
You can purchase high-resolution large-scale print of these boozy closeups at Bevshots. There are a lot more photos below as well. Just hold you mouse pointer over the picture to find out what kind of beverage it is.
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This is a good one for you artsy/designer types. This website will test your ability to discern hue in a color spectrum. Simply drag and drop the colors in each row to arrange them by hue order. My score is below.
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