Any time a novel field of engineering is developed, doomsayers convinced it will cause all sorts of dire consequences seem to spring fully-formed from the general population. In most cases their arrival seems to precede the development of experts optimistic enough about the field to actually learn it. The questionable nature of such doomsaying is obvious, so I find it embarrassing to count myself among their number.
Luminal engineering is not, strictly speaking, a new field. Color has been an important factor in traditional disciplines like Feng Shui for some time, an acknowledged vector for affecting the viewer's mind. But we are spending a far greater portion of our time staring at multicolored screens than we used to, with the people programming those screens having far greater control over the colors people see. If your Feng Shui consultant tells you to put a red painting in your bedroom, that will affect maybe 5% of the color you see in a day, if you make a point of looking at it. If your favorite website changes its palette, that could be upwards of 30% without any additional effort on your part. Luminal engineering therefore has a much greater potential to affect the population than it used to, and many of the applications are not very savory.
This is largely because it is not a field being consciously practiced by many people. Much of luminal engineering is currently being done via A/B testing for manipulative ends. Do more people buy when they see a blue button or a red button? what color menu corresponds to the most profit? Does the color of the pen make a difference in voting behavior? In short, how can we use the subliminal effect of colors seen to maximize profit?
There are less obvious applications. My own experience as a visual artist has shown me just how strongly color can affect one's emotions, not just the predominant one but how they relate to one another. Luminal engineering, though it can do a lot of harm when wielded without nuance, also has a lot of upside potential in the field of mental health. And given the decline in mental health that corresponded with us spending so much time looking at screens, we could probably use all the help we can get.
One of my current projects relates to this potential. A large part of Traditional Chinese Medicine can be thought of as balancing the ratios of key neurotransmitters in the patient, and looking at appropriate colors is one way of achieving this. This project employs an LLM AI reference TCM for diagnosis and color prescription, then has a different AI 'fill' the prescription by creating a custom piece of artwork. In so doing it creates mild, noninvasive aides to rebalancing neurotransmitters by looking at colored lights in beautiful proportions to one another. You can check it out here. It is my hope that there will be many more such new entrants into the nascent field of luminal engineering as we become aware of its potential.
Comments