{"id":1062,"date":"2017-10-08T08:59:42","date_gmt":"2017-10-08T07:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exponentialdecay.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2025-11-30T14:24:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T14:24:48","slug":"colour-theory-whats-the-deal-with-the-palettes-im-using","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exponentialdecay.co.uk\/blog\/colour-theory-whats-the-deal-with-the-palettes-im-using\/","title":{"rendered":"Color Theory: What’s the deal with the palettes I’m using?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following a recent conversation, I wanted to write this blog to add some final pieces of context to my current interest in color palettes.<\/p>\n

Binary Numbers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Binary Numbers<\/a> project was changed earlier this year following Trump’s inauguration. The original was inspired by simple musings on Data as Art<\/a>. It was updated again in 2014 after the work had stalled due to technical reasons. I increased the complexity of the images, and incorporated Heritage Color Palettes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But the end of last year and the beginning of this were exhausting. Two months were spent in protest:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But it seems that this alone was not able to tear the wheels off a tanker in Tienanmen Square…<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and so I decided on something uplifting. For myself, and for the viewer.<\/p>\n

Cinema Palettes<\/a> was<\/em> a fantastic Twitter account that takes a scene (not necessarily iconic) from a film and analyses the scene’s colors, presenting back to us, the palette used.<\/p>\n

I had been following it for a while and I became curious as to what I might be able to do with it in the configuration of my Binary Numbers.<\/p>\n

And so from January this year I adapted the Cinema Palettes concept into this work starting with 50 new color palettes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The new images are probably a little brighter than the heritage ones; the colors do seem to be a little more saturated. As you might expect for the big-screen.<\/p>\n

The change to the project worked well for cinema lovers. I could highlight the best newly-generated images as well as\u00a0reference the film<\/a> the original colors came from.<\/p>\n

What really interested me is whether, looking at the image out-of-context, it would be possible to derive the film, or even the scene? Could the new abstraction still\u00a0be in some small way, a recreation of that cinematography? Could it evoke a sense of what that movie is? or the director’s style?<\/p>\n

I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide.<\/p>\n

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Princess Mononoke (1997) dir. Hayao Miyazaki. #cinemapalette<\/a> #heritagecolorpalette<\/a> #binarynumbers<\/a> 14 May 2017. pic.twitter.com\/cUEelv77DB<\/a><\/p>\n

— \ud83d\udcbe\ud83d\udc9c #Digital<\/a> \u2693\ufe0f #Vagabond<\/a> \ud83d\udc9c\ud83d\udcbe (@beet_keeper) May 14, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n