Thinking Colors: Perception, Translation and Representation
A CECC conference organized by the research line Translating Europe Across the Ages
Catholic University of Portugal | Lisbon, March 29-31, 2012
Any environmental phenomenon is primarily perceived by our sensory system, before it is categorized, interpreted and assigned a meaning. Vision provides about 90% of the sensorial information we build up from the surrounding reality. This includes the possibility for colour perception. In the process of visual perception other senses are constantly involved, and they provide an integrated representation of the phenomena, which is encoded in memory and shared by culture.
The categorization and the interpretation of colour are a priori emotional and vary from culture to culture. Languages themselves are prone to variation in color naming: color names have their own “cultural memory”, i.e. they “remember” or “forget” some notions relevant to the speakers’ cultural tradition. Moreover, some cultures do not even define the word "color" per se. Color metaphors are pervasive across languages, very often related with the conveyance of emotional content, yet also very variable in their content association.
Color is a strong semiotic resource and moreover a powerful instrument for meaning conveyance and communication. This potential is widely used in a range of fields, from art and color therapy, to interior design and fashion, from advertising, e-branding and marketing to social, ethnic or nation affiliation. Borderline phenomena such as involuntary synaesthesia, in which the perception of color is pervasive even in its sensorial absence, are particularly interesting to consider.
This interdisciplinary conference addresses the interaction between the physiological perception of color and its cultural representation.
Michael Bach was born in Berlin in 1950. He
studied Physics, Psychology and Computer Science in Bochum and Freiburg. In
1981 he finished his PhD thesis “Interaction between neurons in the visual
cortex based on recordings with a multi-microelectrode”, supervised by Prof.
Burkhart Fischer and Prof. Jürgen Krüger. He became head of the
Electrophysiological Laboratory in the Department of Ophthalmology, University
of Freiburg, in 1983. He holds a habilitation and venia legendi for
‘Neurobiophysik’ and was appointed as Professor (APL) in 1998. In 1999 he was
appointed “Akademischer Direktor” and became head of Section
Visual Function / Electrophysiology at the University Eye Hospital, University of
Freiburg. Since 2004 he chaired the PERG Standardisation Committee of the
International Society for Clinical Electrophysiology of Vision (ISCEV). He published more than 200
peer-reviewed papers,
500 first-authored oral presentations
/ posters and 20 book chapters, as well as the website visual phenomena.
Pedro Calapez
Pedro Calapez was born in Lisbon (1953) where he lives and works. He began taking part in exhibitions in the seventies and in 1982 had his first solo exhibition. He has exhibited his work individually in various galleries and museums, most notably Histórias de objectos, Casa de la Cittá, Roma, Carré des Arts, Paris and Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (1991); Petit jardin et paysage, Salpêtriére Chapel, Paris (1993); Memória involuntária, Chiado Museum, Lisbon (1996); Campo de Sombras, Pilar i Joan Miró Foundation, Majorca (1997); Studiolo, INTERVAL-Raum fur Kunst & Kultur, Witten, Germany (1998); Madre Agua, MEIAC - Contemporary Art Museum, Badajoz and CAAC - Andalucia Contemporary Art Centre (2002); Selected works 1992-2004, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2004); piso zero, CGAC - Galicia Contemporary Art Centre, Santiago de Compostela (2005); Lugares de pintura, CAB - Caja Burgos Art Centre, Burgos.
Most outstanding among the various collective exhibitions in which he has taken part are the biennials of Venice (1986) and S.Paulo (1987 and 1991) and the exhibitions: 10 Contemporâneos, Serralves Museum, OPorto (1992); Perspectives, Marne-La-Vallée Contemporary Art Centre (1994); The day after tomorrow, CCB - Belém Cultural Centre, Lisbon (1994); Ecos de la materia, MEIAC, Badajoz (1996); Tage Der Dunkelheit Und Des Lichts, Bonn Art Museum (1999); EDP.ARTE, Serralves Museum, OPorto (2001); “Del Zero al 2005. Insights on Portuguese art”, Marcelino Botín Foundation, Santander (2005); Beaufort Outside - Inside, Contemporary Art Triennial, PMMK Museum, Ostende (2006); “Mapas, cosmogonias e puntos de referencia”, CGAC-Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea, Santiago de Compostela (2007). );“Corpo,Densidade e Limite”,MACE – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas / Colecção António Cachola (2009). “Serralves 2009 - The Collection”, Museu de Serralves, Porto.
Reinhold Görling
Reinhold
Görling is a professor of media and cultural studies at the
Heinrich-Heine- University Düsseldorf. He was visiting professor at
Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck and the University of California
Irvine.
He got his PhD from the University Hannover with a study on literature,
photography and film during the Spanish Civil War (“Dinamita
Cerebral”, 1986), and his Habilitation in Comparative
Literature with a study on aesthetic aspects of intercultural processes (Heterotopia.
Lektüren einer interkulturen
Literaturwissenschaft, 1997). His other publications
include
Kulturelle Topografien (Ed., 2004), Geste.
Bewegungen zwischen Film und Tanz (Ed., 2008), Die
Verletzbarkeit des Menschen. Folter
und die Politik der Affekte (Ed., 2011). He
currently works at the intersection
between media philosophy, psychoanalysis, and visual studies.
Wang Tao
Tao
Wang was born in Kunming, China in 1962. He studied
Chinese Language and Literature in the Yunnan Normal University
(Kunming) and then Art Theory at the Graduate School of the Chinese
Academy of Arts (Beijing) before coming to London in 1986. In
1993, he obtained the PhD degree from the School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS), University of London with dissertation titled Colour
Symbolism in Late Shang China, and in the same year was appointed
as Lecturer and later Senior Lecturer in Chinese Archaeology at the
Department of Art and Archaeology of SOAS. He now holds the position
Reader in Chinese Archaeology and Heritage at the University College
London.
He
has published more than 50 academic papers and several monographs,
including Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the
Meiyintang Collections (2009), Unpublished
Chinese Wooden Slips in the British Library (2007, eds. with Frances Wood and Hu Pingsheng), A
Selection of Inscribed Early Chinese Bronzes from Sotheby’s and
Christie’s (2007, with Liu Yu), A
Complete Collection of Chinese Wooden and Bamboo Documents,
vol. 20 (2005, ed. with Hu Pingsheng), Exploring
China’s Past: New Discoveries and Studies in Chinese Art and
Archaeology
(1999, trans. and ed. with Roderick Whitfield), Origins
of the Wuxing Theory and Modes of Thought
in Early China (1998, eds. with Sarah Allan, and Fan Yuzhou), Exploration
into China (1995), and Dunhuang Manuscripts in
British Collections (Non-Buddhist Scriptures) (1990-07, eds. with
others). ). He has organized a number of conferences and
workshops and is academic adviser and
contributor to four TV documentaries on Chinese history and archaeology.
The color of the ‘Other’ in the modern Portuguese
youth novel – a reading of the books Uma questão de Cor (A
Question of Color) by Ana Saldanha and Baunilha e
Chocolate (Vanilla and Chocolate) by
Ana Meireles
Alexandra Cheira:
A.S. Byatt’s snow queen and snow white Fiammarosa:
fusing the eponymous wonder tales’ evil and good female characters by means
of the colour white
Panel 2:
Color and
Cognition
Chiar: Ana M.
Abrantes
Room: 421
Anna Maszerowska:
As black as night – explaining color cinema to the
visually impaired
Nele Dael & Christine Mohr:
Disentangling the red‐effects. The importance of emotional arousal and
potency in the processing of red
16:00 – 16:30
COFFEE BREAK
16:30 – 17:30
Panel 3:
Color,
Language and Translation
Chair:
Victoria
Bogushevskaya
Room: Sala
Exposições
Alexandra Lopes:
The ghost of a chance? Translating colours across
languages and cultures
Ana Maria Bernardo:
On the Translation of Colours – Some Challenges
17:45 – 18:45
Keynote-Speaker
Michael Bach
Room: Sala Exposições
March, 30
9:30 – 11:00
Panel 4:
Color and
Literature
Chair:
Elisabetta Colla
Room: Sala
Exposições
Volker Klöpsch:
A Red Heart: The Concept of Colours in Chinese
Culture and their Function in Poetry
Yukiko Saito:
Uncertain Grey in the Iliad: a study on the
metaphorical function of colour in antiquity
Panel 5:
Color,
Language and Translation
Chair:
Victoria
Bogushevskaya
Room: 421
Elizabete Manterola Agirrezabalaga:
Cultural Representation of Colors in Basque.
Comparative Study of the Translation of the Work by Bernardo Atxaga
Urmas Sutrop:
Towards a semiotic theory of basic colour terms and
the modelling
systems theory
Mari
Uusküla:
Red in use: a comparative study of Hungarian and
Czech words for red
Panel 6:
Color and
Arts
Chair: Peter
Hanenberg
Room: 422
Ana Cachola:
The colors of belonging: the
Portuguese flag in contemporary art
Rosalie Black Kiah:
From National
Flags to Kente Cloth: Color Symbolism in African Culture
11:00 – 11:30
COFFEE BREAK
11:30 – 13:00
Panel 7:
Color and
Literature
Chair:
Alexandra Lopes
Room: Sala
Exposições
Mercè Altimir Losada:
The use of colour in Akiko Yosano’s Midaregami
(Tangled Hair)
Silvia Canuti:
The translation of colours in Bing Xin’s early poems
as expression of an inner struggle in the early 20th century’s
China
Elisabetta Colla:
The Sensuous Colors of Physical Things: Liu Xie and
the Chinese Traditional Literary Theory and Criticism (Sixth Century)
Panel 8:
Color,
Language and Translation
Chair:
Victoria
Bogushevskaya
Room: 421
Alena Anishchanka:
Which OBJECT FOR COLOR? The choice of metonymical
patterns in denominal color names
Helena Casas-Tost & Sara Rovira-Esteva:
When rainbows have different colours: teaching
colour terms in Chinese to Spanish speakers
Susana Valdez Sengo:
Right-click Skip Translation, and the new
Localization window opens. The path to Colour Localization
Panel 9:
Color and
Arts
Chair: Ana
Cachola
Room: 422
Anabela Mendes:
“The bottom of the sea appears to divers of a purple
color in bright sunshine“. Brief reflections on the idea of color in Goethe,
Kandinsky and Klee
Márcia Bessa Marques:
Reading colour in William Hogarth’s Noon
Monika Keska:
Colour Codes in the Films of Peter Greenaway
13:00 – 14:30
LUNCH
14:30 – 16:00
Panel 10:
Color and Space
Chair: Peter
Hanenberg
Room: Sala
Exposições
Wong Nim-yan:
The Color of
‘Colonial/Local Color’: Sketching the Interior Frontier of Portuguese
Settlers in Macau from the Hong Kong fiction Doomsday Hotel by
Wong Bik-wan
Maria João
Cordeiro:
The color blue: perceptions representations in
travel and tourism
Panel 11:
Color and
Arts
Chair: Ana
Cachola
Room: 422
Barbara Aniello:
The Colors of the Sound
Irina Friedland:
Interactions between Stravinsky' Concerto for Piano
and Wind Instruments And Analytic Cubism in Visual Arts
Speakers – 30€ Participants - 45€ Late registrations (after January 31) – 60€ The registration fee includes lunch on March 30, coffee breaks and conference documentation.
Payment modalities:
By bank transfer:
NIB 003300000017013412105
IBAN PT50 0033 0000 0017 0134 1210 5
SWIFT BCOMPTPL
By cheque issued to:
Universidade Católica Portuguesa
and sent to:
Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura A/C Rosário Lopes
