When observing color’s lack of brilliance, whether due to exposure to sun, water, or other natural agents, we might find ourselves thinking about the process of decay, which strips from color its original intensity. If we sit long enough in one place, colors around us will change according to the time of day and, of course, light conditions. A change in color saturation, brightness, or intensity reveals a change in light and, simultaneously, the passing of time and mutation of our visual surroundings. By observing light, and therefore color, we are able to discern day from night, a pink dawn from an orange dusk. However, on the screens of our digital devices, color is always sharp, bright, and luminous, as if time has no effect on it. Color shines. It will always shine with the same intensity, tonality, and saturation—as if time never passes in the digital realm. 

My research explores how digital color identity imposes new aesthetics on users and penetrates the relationship between artist and medium. This argument is in conversation with a lineage of media scholarship, from Marshall McLuhan to Lev Manovich, to Christiane Paul, and is indebted to a study on digital color conducted by Carolyn L. Kane.

Within the large spectrum of examples that are concerned with digital color’s presentness, ubiquity, and meaning in technology, the works I focus on embed some crucial aspects of computer-mediated art. I examine early experiments with information technology that were largely limited by narrow technical possibilities, in particular in the work of Tommaso Tozzi (b. 1960). I further explore the process of unveiling and recognizing the numerical simulation made possible by the nature of the browser, as seen in the work of 01.ORG, the alias of duo Eva and Franco Mattes (both b. 1976). My research also looks at the circular and self-referential dialogue between the physical world and its digital representation, such as in the work of Elisa Giardina Papa (b. 1979).