The future..

I am not really certain what the future holds for color.  Most definitely holograms seeings as how we already have holograms as licenses, we will soon have the through our cell phones, tvs, computers.  Maybe one day they will figure out a way to focus on the retina and how to change the colors seen by your own two eyes.   Maybe some day there will be a way so that when people get migranes they can make everything a tone, so it is not as bright and wont hurt as bad to look at.  Maybe one day, you get sick and tired of the dreary gray sky, and can change the way you see it within and make it a bright day.  All of these ideas wouldn't be possible without the discoveries and research of Ogden Rood.

The world today

Ogden Rood has effected the world today in many ways.  When you turn on the T.v.  you can change the lightness, the contrast, the saturation, making picture quality just perfect for each individual seeing as how we all perceive things differently within our retina.  Same goes for computer screens, also with creating digitial media, most computer programs make it easy for you to adjust color just to the exact hue, saturation,and brightness that you want.    Also many sports teams use the idea of complementary colors in their jerseys, because it is eye catching.

Yellow and Violet complementary colors

orange & blue complementary

Science

Rood was one of the first to suggest using the concept of photography in microsopes, and one of the first to take binocular pictures with that instrument.   His methods of photometry that he has created, and his examination of occurance that depend on the physiology of vision, were very clever, as well as his ideas on color contrast.

"When we gaze at a surface that fluctuates not too rapidly in

brightness, there is a sense of flickering, and the same is true

when two surfaces differing in brightness are alternately presented

to our field of view. If now the illumination of the two

surfaces be gradually equalized, the flickering will diminish and

will disappear at equality. This is obvious when we have similar

surfaces as to color illuminated by the same quality of light and

it forms a criterion quite independent of brightness that may be

used in photometry." Ogden Rood

Influenced

Ogden Rood influenced many artists, and styles.  One of which was impressionism, a movement that had much to do with depicting light, movement, complementary colors.  One example is Claude Monet's Sunrise(above), he uses complimentary colors to creat contrast and small little brush strokes to create movement.  As Rood said in his book, "paint with light!",That Monet did!

Another artist that was very much influenced by Ogden was Georges Seurat a neo-impressionist or pointilist painter.  He was very scientific about his work, much like Ogden was.  In his painting Circus Sideshow (Below), he implements small little dots with complimentary colors to creat a man.

Modern Chromatics

 

Published in 1879

    Modern Chromatics explained many concepts that were still relatively unknown, such as the difference between additive and subtractive color mixing, the color spectrum, and he thoroughly described the three colormaking attributes of hue, saturation, and value.  It is one of the books that is still precise today.

TOP: His analysis of pigments chroma

BOTTOM: His type of color wheel, also called chromatic circle.

Research behind the theories

Rood's practice as an art student in Munich brought the  problems of vision and color to him from the very start, and  he was always in view of the numerous themes that physics and painting share.  One of Ogden’s first scientific/ color contribution was a paper he wrote at Columbia on the green tint produced by mixing blue and yellow powders. Where he describes the creation of white by the mixing of yellow and blue light from the spectrum and gives the explanation of green being due to absorption. He uses a Spectra-scope, a physics instrument used to measure properties of light, to view these strips of paper. He then uses “Colour tops” which were discs that he spun, that had accurately proportioned amounts of color to recreate the mixing of colors yet just with light.

  

 Ogden Roodalso followed up on the change of an objects color due to its material.  He used different surfaces such as one coated with magnesium oxide (A white solid form) and one coated with soot (looks like dirt powdery/smudglable substance), which he then studied under a microscope.  He determined that the size of the particles of which the surface is made up of effects the reflection of light and therefore; the color.

Theories.

     

 Rood attributed to the terms ; Purity(Saturation), Lightness(Value), and Hue, which he discussed in depth in his book, "Modern Chromatics".Hue which is how you describe color: red,green,blue,yellow.  Things that are not hues are browns, and pinks which are just variations of orange and red.  Saturation is simply means how 'pure" is the color, without concerning light,  how intense the color is.  Lightness has to do with value of a color, and how light or dark a color is in terms of the amount of light reflected or absorbed. 

  Rood also did much research and brought to light the ideas of Additive color mixing.  Additive color is defined as the way our eye construes wavelengths of light, which therefore changes are preception of color. It is based on the color of light that is reflected off of a surface into our eye.  He clamied in "Modern Chromatics" that any two colors that mixed and relfected white light were complimentary.  Therefore he encouraged painters to "paint with light!".