Speakers - Friday
Dr Jean Pretorius is a former President of the Colour Society of Australia, co-founder and Director of the Simon Marais Mathematics Competition and founder of Paintlife Pty Ltd. He is a member of the Advisory Board to MATRIX (Australia's residential research institute for mathematical sciences) and serves on the Investment Committee of Jencay Capital. In the past decade, Jean established himself as a professional artist after formal training at the prestigious Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney. As an artist and mathematician he continues to explore how colour shapes us and we shape it.
Professor Paul R. Martin has over 35 years research experience in experimental anatomy and physiology of the visual system, and has published over 100 research papers on these topics in international scientific journals. His career publications have been referred to (cited) over 6,000 times in the scientific literature and his research received ongoing funding by the Australian Research Council, and the National Health and Medical Research Council from 1993 to 2022.
Dr David Briggs is a classically-trained painter, art educator and researcher who has taught colour, painting and drawing classes since 1996 and has created online resources on colour for painters since the launch of his website The Dimensions of Colour in 2007. David is Past President, Vice President, and NSW Division Chair of the Colour Society of Australia, Co-Chair of the International Colour Association (AIC) Study Group on Arts and Design and a committee member of the AIC/ISCC Colour Literacy Project and CIE Technical Committee 1-99.
Dr Erin Goddard is a Scientia Senior Lecturer in Psychology at UNSW Sydney, where she has been since 2020. She received her PhD in 2011 from the University of Sydney, before completing postdoctoral positions at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Sydney, and at McGill University in Montréal, Canada. I joined UNSW in 2020. Her research aims to understand the workings of human visual system, including colour vision, and its interaction with related brain systems (e.g the influences of task, attention and memory on visual processes). She uses a combination of behavioural methods (psychophysics) as well as neuroimaging (fMRI and MEG) to address these questions. For further details of her research, see http://goddardlab.psy.unsw.edu.au/
Professor Branka Spehar is a Professor of Psychology at the School of Psychology, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Her research interests include lightness and colour perception, perceptual organization, attentional capture, and, more recently, the perceptual foundations of aesthetic experience. She is particularly interested in the neural mechanisms underlying these processes—how they are affected by varying spatial and temporal contexts, how they develop, and how they are tuned to the statistics and characteristics of natural images.
Kerry O’Donnell (Macquarie Street walking tour) is the CSA NSW Division Secretary. She studied art and design before working as a designer and colourist for woven and printed fabrics in the textile industry. She then taught design and colour at TAFE NSW for many years. She has a strong interest in colour and its effects in all areas of design and art.
The Activities
The Billson Research Laboratory is named after eminent Ophthalmologist Professor Frank Billson AO and is located at the Save Sight Institute (old Sydney Hospital Building) on Macquarie St (centre block, second floor). It was built with funding from the University of Sydney Medical Research Foundation and a donation by Marno Parsons AM, and opened in 2011. The laboratory is home to basic and clinical researchers who study the normal structure of the eye and visual pathways, and investigate the causes of (and develop treatments for) blinding diseases. The tour comprises a brief introduction to the study of nerve connections in the eye that serve the sense of vision, and a visit to the confocal microscopy suite for high-resolution analysis of human retina. There will be two tours of 20 – 30 minutes for a maximum of five participants each.
The Caroline Simpson Library is a specialised research library open to anyone with an interest in the history of house and garden design, interior furnishings and domestic life in NSW. Its collection features a wide range of formats, including architectural pattern books, architectural fragments, wall and floor coverings, trade catalogues and sample books, garden ornaments, hardware and fittings, soft furnishings and trimmings, personal papers, manuscripts, pictures, photographs, books, periodicals and oral histories.
Macquarie Street originally formed a central axis for the colonial Governors' Domain and Civic Precinct. Today it is a hub for government, research, legal and medical professions, and for recreation in the Botanical Gardens, Domain and Hyde Park. It has a rich array of architecture from the 19th and 20th centuries, with government and public institutions intermingled among commercial and residential buildings. Colour schemes reflect the changing fashions and tastes of their time and are based on the materials and technologies used to produce them. In interior and exterior architecture, colour schemes can have practical as well as sociological uses including to communicate mood and atmosphere or to display status. As you explore your way along Macquarie Street guided by CSA NSW Secretary Kerry O'Donnell, you will analyse exterior and interior colour schemes, their uses and effect, and the materials used to create them in some of these interesting and varied buildings from a range of periods and styles. A handout/work sheet and colour reference material will be provided.
Opened in 1816, the
Royal Botanic Garden is the oldest scientific institution in Australia and one of the most important historic botanical institutions in the world. For the colour scavenger hunt devised by
Dr Paul Green Armytage, and conducted by Paul and
Dr Natalie O'Connor, participants have a printed set of colours to find as they walk around. Participants may wish to keep looking throughout the conference. The essential point of the exercise is that it should get people really looking at colours and seeing the subtle differences.
