"Advanced Colour Terms" Hanna Hofmann. Photos (c) Lea Fabienne 2025

Advanced Colour Terms

Advanced Colour Terms is an installation that explores how language shapes our perception of colour. Two industrial pipes—mirroring the space's architecture—rise from the floor: one emits shifting light, the other strange, generated speech. A machine learning model, trained on 300+ global colour terms, invents speculative new descriptors, imagining how non-human intelligence might name colour. Spoken through one pipe the other emits the corresponding colour in real time, creating a feedback loop between synthetic language and visual perception. The work bridges linguistic data and sensory experience, questioning perception’s boundaries while reflecting on the loss—and potential rebirth—of language through technology.

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