Prisms

Artists Monika Aleksandrowicz
Genre Object
Edition Survival 15

Everything we hear is an opinion,
not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective,
not the truth.
MARK AURELIUS

When a prism is placed in front of a source of light at a specific angle, light becomes dispersed and our perception changes. In social life, the function of the prism can be played by an event, an aberration or a slight anomaly, which momentarily disperses a given community and reveals its complex structure. In spite of the appearances, our ability to perceive colours is far from perfect.

Studying optics does not exhaust the phenomenon of colour perception. Since the end of the 20th century, scientists have believed that colour does not exist. So, what is that which we term “colour” and how does our perception work?

In chemistry, prisms are used in spectophotometry – a method based on measuring the transmission or reflection of light.

 

photo by Małgorzata Kujda