What is the colour of life? Or death? The Fibonacci Sequence? How about kittens?

Chroma Chamber is a web data-driven interactive new media art installation from Vancouver based visual artist JG Mair that considers such questions. The project's inspiration came from Mair's interest in taking literally any concept and distilling it down to a single visual entity: its color according to the Internet.

In order to reveal the one colour of any submitted idea no matter how great or small, there needed to be some sort of framework. The massive amounts of accessible, topical online image data seemed like a logical starting point. In essence, it evolved into a user-initiated, real-time harnessing of the web’s collective intelligence.

Chroma Chamber taps programmers, designers and musicians to create an immersive and generative walk-in space of color, light and voice-user-interface (VUI). The UX is driven by 100% open-source custom software written with Canadian programmer Bill Pettigrew that collates real-time Google image search results and then runs a series of background steps to ultimately place us directly in the perception gap between machine algorithms and human expectations.

Color as metaphor, deterministic vs random crowdsourcing, big data influence and reductive homogenization are some of the themes that spark discussion. As well, preconceptions come into play as the colors yielded range from the expected to the unexpected. In sentient life, color as meaning is a highly ingrained condition. Chroma Chamber initiates a self-reflective contemplation of the mysterious and influential forces shaping our lives.

Chroma Chamber will be premiering in Vancouver Canada at Cineworks Filmmakers and Media Artists Society in Spring 2020.