Throughout my doctoral research, I was focused on researching one of the most beautiful and visible aspects found in much of life - color. Coloration in Nature occurs in three ways: pigmentation, structural color, and bioluminescence. The stunning diversity of color not only defines aesthetics of Nature, but also hints at a wealth of potential functionalities within living systems.
While certain colors have been well documented in human culture and aesthetic, as in the British Standard Colour Chart, colors from living organisms have rarely been so categorized. Shown here is a new type of color chart, inspired by the British Standard, drawn from images of real living organisms. Pigment groups are labeled in accordance with their color families. Importantly, this mainly focuses on pigment-based color, not structural color or bioluminesence.
Credit: Sunanda Sharma
All images courtesy of The Mediated Matter Group
This categorization combines color theory with notions of color from biology - a multidisciplinary field combining spectroscopy, cognition, organic analysis, and more. Shown here is a subset of colors representing the melanin pigment family.
Credit: Sunanda Sharma
All images courtesy of The Mediated Matter Group
Such a guide of biological color could serve as an update to one of the oldest guides, P. Syme’s “Werner’s Nomenclature of Colors”, famously brought by Darwin on The Beagle.
Credit: N. Rougeux, P. Syme, A. Werner