The Virtual Colour Laboratory: The development of an interactive web application for colour education

Paper in proceeding, 2013

This paper presents the development of the popular science project The Virtual Colour Laboratory (VCL), and the problems connected to translating spatial colour phenomena to a digital spatial context, from the viewpoint of practice based architectural research. The original idea was to create an application where users could explore colour phenomena while walking around in a photorealistic 3D-environment. Eventually it became apparent that the problems connected to visualisation of colour appearance and spatial experience could not be solved without simplifying the concept. So instead of modelling in 3D, the application was based on 2D-images, derived from thorough studies of colour phenomena in real life situations. VCL, in its current form, is an interactive web based application for visual presentation and demonstration of existing research results on spatial colour phenomena. It currently contains eight different stations, presenting and demonstrating either a spatial colour phenomenon or a principle for simultaneous contrast. We now want to expand the application to demonstrate more colour phenomena. In this development we invite other researchers to contribute with new stations.