City Palette Panel Discussion
by@ Antenna, 3718 St. Claude Ave,
February 1, 2018, 6-7:30pm
We often talk about place, home, gentrification and urban change in terms of color––usually black, white and brown. Yet in cities like New Orleans, color lines are not only drawn by redlines. Here, each of our 73 neighborhoods boasts its own identity through the color of its urban landscape. As one travels along the river, for example, boldly painted houses accented by lively tropical flowers in the Bywater eventually fade and give way to the desaturated, discreet tones and rich oak foliage of the Lower Garden District. How does the accumulation of individual tastes and vernacular design choices help to create a sense of place and define the personality of a place? How does color communicate to those within and outside of a place? What happens to color when a neighborhood begins to change?
While riding buses up and down town, Antenna::Spillways Artist-in-residence Chloë Bass was taken by the rich and diverse color pallette of New Orleans’s cityscape and was inspired to create City Palette, a phone app that allows users to photograph their surroundings and generate unique color swatches that are added into a collectively designed City Palette.
Antenna is convening a panel of artists, architects and city planners to introduce our audience to the City Palette app and to engage in a rich conversation about how color is made, interpreted, protected and disrupted in our city.
Photo: from the New Orleans RTA transit system featuring work by Chloë Bass embedded within the advertising on all buses in the city, by jeaniusann via instagram. To the right, the app in use, available on all apple IOS devices.
