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EnChroma Glasses Can Correct Colorblindness -- Just Ask Artist Daniel Arsham

This article is more than 7 years old.

Daniel Arsham favored grey for most of his career. But last week, he unveiled his first exhibition in full color. The inspiration behind this pivot of palette? A pair of EnChroma glasses, which revealed thousands of new tones to the colorblind artist.

When I spoke to Arsham, he was putting finishing touches on his full-color show. In a sea of crumbling amethyst basketballs, assistants painted the floor lilac and tested lights. Upstairs, cracked castings of cobalt blue streetwear were displayed on clinical stands, like armor in The Met’s Roman wing.

These pieces, in Arsham’s first solo show in New York City, continue the artist’s ongoing practice of constructing fictional archaeological “artifacts” from a near past -- cameras, basketballs, hubcaps and other everyday objects. He got started on this theme after a trip to Easter Island in 2010, where he witnessed archaeologists unearthing ancient artifacts as well as things left behind by a more recent excavation group. He remembers thinking, “If archaeologists can find these things and create a story out of it, can I reverse-engineer that and build a fictional archaeology out of present-day objects?”

Since then, he’s reverse-engineered plenty of present-day pieces, and has found that white and grey materials, like volcanic ash and pyrite (fool’s gold), helped create his desired illusion of disintegrating artifacts.

For years, color was hardly a consideration. “I knew I was colorblind, but it hadn’t been a part of my thinking. I just liked those tones. A lot of it had to do with materials.”  

Still, when Arsham heard about EnChroma's colorblind-correcting glasses sometime in 2014, he was intrigued. Don McPherson, Chief Science Officer, says, “We are, in effect, improving the range of colors they can differentiate.” The company, founded in 2010, started offering glasses in 2012. They retail for between $200 and $400.

The technology doesn’t “cure” colorblindness (also called color vision deficiency), and doesn’t work for everyone. But with a simple online test (available here) Arsham was able to confirm he had the type of condition that EnChroma can improve for 80% of customers.

Putting them on for the first time was a revelation. Arsham could see thousands of shades, it seemed, that he had never seen before. “When I got the glasses and started thinking about what this could mean in relation to my work, it drastically expanded the possibilities of materials.”

Suddenly, he found himself gravitating away from his typical art-making materials of ash and pyrite and toward colorful crystals he had picked up on a trip to Brazil years ago. Before putting on the EnChroma glasses, he had never really seen the colors sitting in his studio stockpiles.  

If it seems strange that an artist could practice without a full range of colors to work with, this thought has struck EnChroma’s McPherson, too. He says many artists -- hundreds, if he had to guess -- have reached out either looking for or expressing thanks for the glasses. “I’m astounded by the number of people who are color-deficient who work in the world of art. It’s remarkable to me they’ve been able to perform as well as they have.”

McPherson remembers, in particular, a group of students who wanted to buy EnChroma glasses as a gift for their colorblind art professor. “Subsequently, I realized it’s not really a limitation. Especially if you can develop these extra skills, when you do get the glasses, you have sort of a leg up, because you’ve trained your other skills to be extra sensitive.”

And ultimately, for Arsham, the world he had trained himself to see suited him fine. The glasses were were distracting, “like wearing 3D glasses all the time.” Grasping for words to describe the experience, he says,  “It almost feels psychedelic. The color, and the precision of the color, and the variation of it.” He stopped wearing them regularly.

Now, they serve more as a tuning fork than a prosthetic. He mostly uses them to test his color choices in the studio. “Once I select the color, I don’t need to wear them. I’ve already accepted and visualized what you see.”

He might even be seeing a bit more. The glasses correct mild to extreme color deficiencies, meaning some are overcorrected. Additionally, explains McPherson, “There’s a lot of evidence you can improve your color vision through training over time. If you were a chef, you can improve your sense of smell and taste, if you were a musician, your ear.” Though not clinically proven, McPherson posits the glasses can help anyone, colorblind or not, cultivate an appreciation and understanding of color.

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