The synthetic color sense of Pipilotti Rist, or, Deleuzian color theory for electronic media art

Abstract

Electronic artist Pipilotti Rist’s colorful and sensuous video installations enliven the new media landscape and offer a fresh paradigm for conceptualizing color in electronic media art. This article traverses this landscape in Rist’s work by way of Gilles Deleuze’s equally unique and idiosyncratic color theory. While Deleuze articulated his color theory in terms specific to painting, his theory was nonetheless structured out of analogies to inorganic, electronic, and synthetic, machine systems, and thus it is highly compatible for discussions of color in electronic aesthetics. This article explicates Deleuze’s argument that color is a form of haptic sensation that is not nostalgic, nor purely meaningless, but rather offers fresh affects, erotics, and sensorial possibilities that balance meaning and chaos, and affect and logic. The article concludes that the much-needed continuation of color philosophy within new media art is broached through Rist’s synthetic, yet lively artwork.