Present in every stratum of human activity, colour is a topic that lends itself to inquiry from a wide range of disciplines. At the edge of a new era, which is marked by digitisation, globalisation, the expansion of virtual worlds, technological advancements of historic proportions, and a new order of information as power, it is necessary to delve into a new level of interdisciplinary and international colour research cooperation. The aim of the Colour Research Unit is to turn over a new leaf in colour research, to address the state-of-the-art research inquiries from various disciplines and to bridge the gap between the key areas of colour studies. The Research Unit consists of three main research areas – mind, technology, and culture – that are connected through the idea of media as common epistemological parameter.
These three research areas comprise four projects from sciences and four projects from humanities. The overall eight research projects address the core issues of colour studies and colour sciences, including Perception of Colour, Psychology of Colour, Colour Technologies, Colour in Science, Colour Visualisation in Science and Humanities, Colour and Cinema, Colour and Language, and Colour and Society. A complex network of relations between the single research projects distinguishes the Research Unit, creating the possibility of a paradigm shift in the approach to colour analysis. In order to investigate the gap between the two differing worlds, digital colour and analogue colour, the Research Unit represents a unique centre for interaction between neuroscience, nanotechnology research, visualisation, and cultural studies. Thus, the expected result of the Research Unit will be a paradigm shift, conceiving colour as an interface that allows us to combine the latest advancements in technological research with new achievements of neuroscience and psychological studies to approach intercultural issues, such as colour symbolism, in a holistic way.