Lessons of iridescence: what experientialist art can teach us about color perception

An object or surface exhibits iridescence when it changes in color as its viewing or lighting angle changes. In this article, I explore the relations between enacted perception, color experience, and visual art through a recent case of iridescent painting. That is, by bringing painter Tiina Pyykkinen’s work with iridescent materials into dialogue with philosopher Alva Noë’s sensorimotor contingency theory of perception (SMC), I investigate the following questions: (a) How can SMC be employed to achieve a better understanding of both creating and viewing iridescent paintings? and (b) What kinds of philosophical implications does the examination of these two issues have for SMC itself, and especially for its account of color perception? I argue that the allure and value of iridescent art consists not only in its ability to disrupt habitual sensorimotor know-how about color behavior but also in its capacity to foster deliberate examination of this experience in carefully curated settings. Indeed, as an exemplar of what Noë calls experientialist art, Pyykkinen’s paintings make us aware of ourselves as the kinds of perceivers we fundamentally are: embodied, enactive, skillful, and situated. At the same time, they urge us to reconsider some of SMC’s assumptions about color perception, particularly as these pertain to determinate colors and color-constancy, the learning of new sensorimotor color know-how, and the terminology used to conceptualize iridescence.