Ambient colour: Emotive experience

Abstract

Mindful application of colour is an essential aspect of the sensory design of spatial experience. Ambient colour has an immense potential to elevate common well-being and inspire a happy state of mind in urban habitants. To determine the ways of employing colour as a remedy, I analyse the psychophysical aspects of colour perception and their manifestation in art. Then, through colour in visual storytelling of the pure beauty of the sky, this study develops a method of connecting high-tech living spaces to the natural environment.

This research work explores colour as a sensation. Therefore, the focal point is the perception of colour as a subjective and introspective experience. First and foremost, this thesis introduces colour as a complex multisensory experience. Thus, the theoretical part of this study indicates the cycle of multidimensional sensuous interrelation regarding the human experience of colour, while the artistic experiments explore colour as an emotional and immaterial entity.

This thesis focuses not just on how we see colour but how we feel it. In that respect, I believe that sensorial and experience design are crucial to the quality of our built environment and, consequently, to the quality of our life. The purpose of my work here is to influence a deeper understanding of the power of colour and to create a transcending experience that sparks happiness. My creative research of the sense of colour links emotive experience and language. I also identify the role of the pictorial language of abstract art in advancing a feeling of colour.

A catalyst for my artistic work is the insight that the colours of the sky represent the greatest presence of sublime colour in our reality. The sky panorama of luminous colour epitomises a natural source of healthful colour. Therefore, the colours of the sky were chosen as a source of inspiration for arousing a feeling of tranquillity. The artistic venture culminates in a recreation of the magical experience of the local natural skylight, by translating its continuous fluidity of colours into dynamic ambient coloured lighting design for the built environment. I create an experience in a full sense of an ever-changing here and now, inspiring the feeling of being-in-the-moment by an infusion of the serene beauty of the sky into an interior space.