By Cristina Escofet and Theofili Machairidi

On a recent visit to the top floor of The Vinyl Factory space at Brewer Street Car Park, we experienced “unicolor”, the exhibition by German artist Carsten Nicolai.

His deep observation of nature during his studies as Landscape designer combined with his passion for Goethe’s work on colour theory among other artists and scientists, created a solid foundation for his work.

The project’s initial idea was revolving around white noise and white light: two elements that are related to frequencies. White noise is compiled by all frequencies and white light contains all the colour frequencies. The artist’s idea was to distort the frequencies of light and sound, creating an audio/visual experience, that challenges the way we perceive colour. It consists of 16 modules, each presenting a different approach towards colour perception and aims to “trigger your imagination and test how aware you are of your reality”. As Goethe discovered our brain will always try to add colours and observers feel what they see is reality, although it is an illusion created difficult to identify.

One module shows RGB sequence moving at high speed and we see it turning white colour because our brains mix the colour automatically. Another shows a very strong red next to white which results in an afterglow of green, which is the complementary colour. At the same time a programme translates the sound so that it changes more or less according to the parameter of the colour projection.

The artist’s intention is not to challenge the observer’s mind but to let him drift through the illusions created, in infinity of colour.

Last chance to visit “unicolor” as it is on show until Sunday 2^nd August at The Brewer Street Car Park.