Águ – the color(s) of water
An experiment into the complexity of color in Cape Verde with architect Patti Anahory
Meet Patti Anahory
Patti Anahory is a practicing architect with degrees from Princeton University and a Boston Architectural College. She works across urbanism, art, pedagogy and curatorial practice.
Her work focuses on interrogating the presupposed relationships of place and belonging in reference to identity, memory, race and gender constructs. She explores the politics of identity from an African island perspective - as a fugitive edge and radical margin.
In her visual experiment Águ – the color(s) of water, Anahoy explores not only the complexities of water and its value but also how the aesthetic of water has informed the visual narrative of Cape Verde, the country from which she heralds.
The visual experiment critically engages the complexity of conditions, experiences and meanings that this precious liquid has in Cabo Verde, an archipelago surrounded by water, yet plagued by droughts
''The contrast between the immensity of the surrounding oceans and the scarcity of potable water features strongly in our daily lives and collective imagination. Yet, the predominant (visual) narrative of Cabo Verde is defined by the trope of idyllic. The work is an experiment which proposes an alternate understanding to this narrow visual (color) narrative of Cabo Verde by complexifying its relationship to water(s), beyond blue. '' — Patti Anahoy
Anahoy's experiment is the start of a visual art piece which proposes a sequential process that relies on Google engine searches and a programmed algorithm to yield unpredictable (color) results depending on the search parameters.
A Google search for “Cabo Verde” in many of the most spoken languages around the world yields a quilt of photographs with a predominance of turquoise blue. A view of Cabo Verde that is turned toward the sea and away from the arid landscape that marks the lives of Cabo-Verdeans who battle daily for access to potable water.
This approach uses (and relies on) Google’s (image) search engine as an integral part of the process. In many ways, it is an ode to the Google universe, which will host this project and house our work, recognising the crucial role it has played in our daily lives. The development of the algorithm and the introduction of my own stock of images aims to imbue the process with personal agency in order to critically resignify the meanings of color, in this case, the color of water. — Patti Anahory
algorithmre-signifying the color (and meaning) of water
An algorithm was programmed to identify and extract the predominant color of the images obtained from Google searches. The algorithm extracts the average RGB color of all the pixels of each image from the array of images downloaded from each thematic Google search.
Prior to discovering/producing the final triptych “my COLOR of WATER”, Anahory extracted two colors: the color of Cabo Verde and the color of Cabo Verde + Water through the compilation of hundreds of images from Google searches of Cabo Verde in a variety of languages. This search returns a screen of alluring photographs with blue as the predominant color.
color 1 = Google image search (Cabo Verde in various languages) + algorithm
color 2 = Google image search (Cabo Verde + Water) + algorithm
my color of water / hacking the search = Google image search (Cabo Verde + Water + Drought + Rain + Water storage + …) + inserted images from my work on (uneven) water distribution + algorithm
Águ - the color/s of water (Color: Cabo Verde)
The color here is the result of:
Google image search (Cabo Verde in various languages) + algorithm
Águ - the color/s of water (Color: Cabo Verde + Water)
The color here is the result of:
Google image search (Cabo Verde + Water) + algorithm
Águ - the color/s of water (Color: Cabo Verde) The color here is the result of: Google image search (Cabo Verde in various languages) + algorithm
my color of water / hacking the search
The color here is the result of:
Google image search (Cabo Verde + Water + Drought + Rain + Water storage + …) + inserted images from my work on (uneven) water distribution + algorithm
My color is the color of water in Cabo Verde. The color of water is not the blue that covers the google image searches but a mixture of tonalities resulting from search words that include various relationships to water: drought, rain, water production and storage, mixed with images of my own work around issues of (uneven) water distribution. — Patti Anahory
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