Entrance = free; RSVP: f.j.j.w.paalman@uva.nl

The presentation will be followed by a discussion with the attendees; to that end you can read in advance Sam Yang's accompanying essay. We hope to see you on the 11th of February! Giovanna Fossati and Floris Paalman

coordinators of the Research Group 'Moving Images: Preservation, Curation, Exhibition'

Abstract - Turbid Medium: The Spectre of Goethe in Digital Color Preservation

Our digital visual world is built on a color standard that defines color as mathematical RGB data, where black is pure absence and grey is just dim white. By revisiting Goethe’s phenomenological investigation of color, this presentation will demonstrate that colorimetry actively constructs and simplifies how we actually see. Goethe insisted that color appearance always involves the interplay of light and darkness through a semi-transparent, “turbid medium”. Such a process of appearance can be observed in how color appears in nature, as in the yellowish color of smoke under daylight. The presentation will show that the tension between phenomenological reality and captured data becomes highly tangible in film restoration, where the rich, material greys of photochemical film collide with the clean, numerical greys of the digital archive. The presentation will also show how the pursuit of “perfect” black and white pathologizes the material textures of older devices and prevents the revelation of a deeper principle: that all vision is mediated, and the generative, contextual grey of the medium is not a noise to be eliminated, but the very ground of color appearance.

Sam Yang is a film archivist and researcher, and a graduate of the MA Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image (University of Amsterdam); email: <sifansamyang@gmail.com>.