Exhibition

MA Curatorial Practice presents "incolorform," an exhibition curated by Curatorial Practice fellow Piper Ross Ferriter. "incolorform" demonstrates how artists are combining the seemingly disparate media of color and data to create a transcendental communication device: a language nobody learns but everybody knows.

Color is information and information is color. Along our evolutionary tract, primates honed color vision as a means of survival. Our brains developed and skulls conformed to support its requirements. Our sense of smell was sacrificed. Ultimately, our "seeing is believing" culture was born and color became its dialect.

But the late 20th century's "Information Revolution" traded meaningful dialogue for data glut. The field of digital humanities is on the brink of extinguishing the very spirit it seeks to clarify. The key to deciphering the human condition is not to strangle it further with analytics, but to return to our primary means of understanding.

David Birkin's photographic Pietà and mixed-media and illuminated Profiles articulate the irreplaceability of life through color association. Rosanna Bruno's Run-on Sentence is a series of 30 paintings that uses a restricted color palette and recurring shapes to establish her own vernacular by anticipating our expectation of communication. Laurie Frick’s data art is a colorful interpretation and optimistic expression of big data that eschews the typically dystopian prediction of information security for something not only reassuring, but also coherent. Martin Wattenberg’s Color Code combines color metadata, algorithm and a 26,710-word database to create an interactive portrait of the English language.