New article on color for The Conversation

My essay on color and its limits is up at The Conversation, and ran as the lead story on the homepage.

"Your phone screen doesn't have the same color range as the human eye — and AI widens the gap between digital images and the real thing" started in a class I teach at CalArts and in my own deuteranomaly. The argument: no single system — an eye, a screen, a camera, an image model — holds all of color. Each one keeps some distinctions by letting others go. The piece follows that through the sRGB color space, a stubbornly electric pothos, and an AI-generated peacock feather that has learned the symbol of iridescence without the event of it. It ends on what happens when images trained on images carry forward fewer differences each pass, while still looking complete.

The Conversation publishes under Creative Commons, so it's free to read and free to republish.
Read it here →