All blues

WEEK 36

Can you feel color?

I asked myself this question as I sat on the floor of a 100-year-old boiler room, leaning up against a 40-foot column, watching, sensing and, yes, feeling, a digital installation to launch the 2020 PANTONE color of the year.

The experience is called Submerge, and it’s open for only a couple of weeks at a new space called ARTECHOUSE beneath Chelsea Market in the Meatpacking District of New York.

I found the concept of ARTECHOUSE itself fascinating. A mash-up of art and technology, it started in D.C. with an outpost in Miami as well, and is designed to push the boundaries of immersive digital art. It would be right at home on the playa. The press materials talked about a lot of stuff I don’t understand in terms of insanely high-resolution laser projection technology, but the line I loved was this: bringing every pixel alive in the widest color spectrum.

If there is a way to feel color, it will be here.

The 2020 PANTONE color of the year — Classic Blue – is said to evoke feelings of “peace and tranquility … imprinted in our psyches as a restful color.”

After staring at the wall-sized PANTONE color chip at the entrance to the exhibit and thinking about Classic Blue, I realized that for me, this calm comes from the color’s familiarity. It’s what I see in nature. The strength of the deep blue oceans in images of our planet, the majestic blue of Lake Tahoe, the endless sky on a bluebird day.

And so I opened the door of the exhibit and stepped into blue.

Digital projections blanketed three massive walls and the entire floor, while sounds and musical elements followed the colors as they moved across the space. I descended the staircase, picked up two small cushions, found my spot leaning against one of the steel columns and took it all in.

There were patterns, grids, dots that looked like blue raindrops, swirling shapes of liquid smoke. The projections washed over any and all surfaces, including our bodies and faces.

The range of blue was fabulous – deep, bright, muted – and incredibly flattering as people’s bodies became silhouettes against the projection.

At times I was inside the sweeping, wide brushstrokes of a Van Gogh. Other times I walked an Escher staircase. Mostly I was swimming in a can of blue paint. I may have even become the paint.

I sat transfixed for more than 45 minutes, and as the graphics cycled, I shifted locations a few times to gain a new perspective. In all, and as predicted, being bathed in blue inspired calm and confidence. I felt boundless.