"Objectivity in colour experience and the elusiveness of aesthetic description" with Dr Joaquim Marcelino Santos

The next event presented by the CSA NSW Division will be a free webinar on Sunday June 25  at 7.00 pm AEST by Dr Joaquim Marcelino Santos (Lusíada University, Lisbon), who will speak on Objectivity in colour experience and the elusiveness of aesthetic description. The session will be hosted by CSA Past President Annamaria di Cara. Please help us to spread word of this event by sharing our posts on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the Colour Society of Australia, or by passing on the following link to your friends, colleagues and students:
https://coloursociety.org.au/event-5300830. 

And please stay tuned for further events of the NSW Division, a gallery walk in the Paddington area being organized by NSW Division committee member Kerry O'Donnell for Saturday July 1, and the next of our series of Creating Colour webinars later in July. We didn't have a CSA NSW Division event in May, but NSW Division Chair Dr David Briggs gave an invited webinar on The Elements of Colour for the Design Institute of Australia on May 18, a recording of which can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtrRpGb-7FU

"Colour is a multifaceted phenomenon which in cognitive terms makes it multi-referential, and this dynamic phenomenon is to be found in art of any era. With the focus on sensing colour in perceiving an artwork, colour is revealed as a changeable phenomenon, relative to the private identity and culture of the artist and of the perceiver.

An artwork is never just an arrangement of colours, of well-defined different parts but rather, consists of colours in a certain arrangement. The first framework is abstract and typically requires rules and models which enable the reading and bringing together of all loose parts which may include form, space, time, and colour....

Colour is embodied in and by the imagistic character of the artwork and brings forth the idea that images are essential when describing an artwork, and colour must have a role in such description. The aesthetic experience of the artwork might be objective, but its description becomes elusive. We may then appeal to an imaginary cognitive performance that will be selective and thus partial when looking for the grounding of appearances by means of descriptions". - Dr Joaquim Marcelino Santos

In his presentation Joaquim will explore how both aesthetic experience and its description may be bound by elements such as fashion, the spirit of age, culture, or other, that can not only determine how we experience objects but also the way we describe them. 

Dr Joaquim Marcelino Santos is an Architect and Professor at the Lusíada University, Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Lisbon, where he lectures in History of Art and Theory of Architecture. He is a research fellow at the CITAD, where he incorporates the research group on Architecture and Design and the Colour Laboratory. He holds a Ph. D from Tampere University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Finland, on the topic The Architectural Object as Aesthetic Object. Alvar Aalto’s House of Culture, and has published and presented papers at international meetings such as Constants of Nature, Constants of Architecture and Mathematical Interface (2023, under publishing); Tili Wiru Tjuta Nyakutjaku: Towards an Extensive Cultural Paradigm (2021); Colour: Towards an Extensive Cultural Paradigm – paradeigma (2021); Apeiron – ᾄπειρον – and Havoc: Beauty in Aalto’s tiles (2018); Colour Free Colourlessness (2018); Lookouts and outlooks: Lisbon, tiles and topography (2018); Impossible objects! Space-time experience of architectural heritage (2015, on Rose Seidler House); Euclid and the Illusion of the Rainbow (2014); Unifying Human Understanding: ad astra per aspera, 2014); Serpentine Gallery Pavilion: Essays on Colour Environment (2013); Alvar Aalto and Kazimir Malevich: Second Thoughts on Colour Environment (2013); Realm Art-Science: By Colour We Think (2013), Metagrass or a Tail of a Green Future Environment (2013); The Colourlessness of the Zener diode (2011), “The Image of Lisbon” a criticism on Wim Wenders’s Lisbon Story, 1994 (2007).