Colorcalm’s ‘by Design’
If you’ve stayed in a W Hotel or flown on Jet Blue recently, you’ve probably noticed the Colorcalm Skies playing on their screens – rolling clouds and shifting colors set to soothing music. Those same people have gathered Irma Boom, John Maeda and Peter Saville and a roster of musicians including New Order to produce the first ambient design DVD, ‘by Design.’
Each of the segments are completely unique in their concept and look: Irma Boom’s Art Barcodes mixes color palettes from 80 paintings by artists from Van Gogh to Warhol, in a series of vertical stripes that blend from one painting to the next – and you can view it chronologically or randomly; John Maeda digitized the palettes of food he found in his refrigerator one day to create “Food Coloring;” and Peter Saville has two sections in “Color Wheel,” one which creates a color palette used by Renaissance painters, and one which slowly, imperceptibly changes from blue to red. Saville’s is set to New Order music, of course; Boom’s to composer Michael Nyman, and Maeda’s to Japanese pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Not only is this a remarkable collaboration between such revered designers, it represents this entirely new genre of design-based ‘entertainment.’ It’s like a piece of collectable artwork on DVD, perfect for showing off your brand-new plasma or flat screen monitor. Plus they’re accepting submissions for volume two, which they plan to release next year.
