18 November 2023

16:45 – 17:30

Amphithéâtre Faure

Michel Albert-Vanel

Michel Albert-Vanel is a color specialist and color designer for textiles, and has been responsible for coloring six oil refineries. An artist, Michel Albert-Vanel was a researcher in computer imaging at the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, professor at ENSAD, founder of the Couleur-Lumière group, in charge of the Lumière theme at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie de La Villette. President of the Centre Français de la Couleur, he was a member of the AIC Executive Committee for 4 years. Founder of the Fédération Française de la Couleur, he is credited with the creation of La Boîte à Lumière – a machine for permuting colors in images – and the Grand Orgue Chromatique for live shows. He has given over 200 conferences worldwide, and designed a television series broadcast in Quebec and the U.S.A. He is the author of numerous articles and books on color, including “Système Planétaire des Couleurs” Color Messenger 2017, and “Des couleurs pour nos écoles”, CFC and Ministère de l’Education.

Conference: Is color just energy?

Needs are changing, and we can no longer be satisfied with old representations, which are proving to be obsolete, subjective and too restricted, because color is bursting out in all fields, and is even a drug, a psychotropic, according to some sociologists. But colorimetry is hardly the answer to these problems, because colors always remain isolated in an unchanging abstract space, whereas colors are always in combination, whether in landscape, architecture or painting. What’s more, these same colors are relative, and depend more on optical fusions than traditional syntheses. We’ve tried to answer these questions with the Planetary Color System, which has enabled us to classify color combinations and come up with striking analogies, such as analyzing modern art in painting, with its unforeseen consequences for contemporary art. Could this be a new mythology, as we still need to solve the problem of the optical appearance of colors in order to make computer-generated images credible, and incorporate all the visual parameters in all their complexity. And finally, we need access to new technologies that will make live painting possible, just as we make music… Will we be able to meet this challenge?