“The Colors of Life: An interdisciplinary artist-in-residence project to research fungal pigments as a gateway to empathy and understanding of microbial life” is a collaboration with Prof. Vera Meyer/V.meer.
The aim of this work is to contextualize the vast amount of information known about pigment-producing organisms through the lens of color. Utilizing language and terms from different fields, this compendium provides multiple parallel paths for humans to engage with organisms distant from us on the evolutionary tree. In this way, it highlights a visible trait of microbial life that inspires wonder, appreciation, and ultimately, empathy.
The compendium builds upon historical guides of natural color, such as Werner's Nomenclature of Colors (1814), and as well as color representation and theory from the 19th century to the present. It draws from existing databases, such as NCBI Taxonomy, PubChem, and KEGG, as well as hundreds of scientific publications that are referenced for the organisms.
This database is actively maintained and is being added to and modified as of September 2021. If you have a suggestion, correction, or contribution you would like to make, please contact sunanda@exsitu.bio. All comments are very welcome!