Color Wall

 

My great uncle Joe Cox was a professor in the School of Design at NC State and designed the ‘Color Wall’ light mural installation at the University library in 1972. The original installation used a mechanical timer and switching device he invented to control a row of 23 lights with seven different colors that projected on a wall creating different colors as they overlap and black metal vanes casting casting colorful shadows as they block the light from different angles. The ‘Color Wall’ was restored in 2010 replacing the original mechanical switching device with a digital controller. 

I have so many fond memories of visiting my Aunt Bets and Uncle Joe as a child, but I never had the chance to see his ‘Color Wall’ until a work trip took me to NC State. Seeing it in person was a moving experience, and it was wonderful seeing how much the community here still loves this wonderful artwork. So glad to see that the University has established an endowment to preserve the ‘Color Wall’ for generations to come.

 

(Click here for all the pictures)

The mural takes light apart and puts it back together again on the white mural surface. The black creates maximum contrast to the lightness of the colors for heightened emotional response.

 
It creates a color experience as you walk down the hall. It was designed for the space. It is a space in which people are in motion. The light patterns change at irregular intervals about 32 times every two minutes. This is about two changes in the time that it takes a person to walk past it. The changes restimulate you so that you don't have to look at a static situation. Change and variety are important to us.

 
Actually the mural reverses the process of painting. Paint breaks up white light and the paint subtracts some of the light frequencies. But the wall of the mural is white and the individual colors are added. The black anodized forms that are set on various angles perform the subtraction by casting shadows. The light also provides a luminosity that paint does not have.

-Joe Cox, 1972