““The New Color” is an online intervention consisting of a faux website (thenewcolor.net) for a non-existent American company (ACI) specializing in the field of developing chemistry. The fictitious company announces a fictitious breakthrough consisting of a previously ‘undiscovered’ colour on the website. The company also carefully explains that at the moment no screens are capable of displaying the colour due to the RGB (Red Green Blue) additive colour model which has nothing to do with this new primary colour.
The website is the presentation of non-facts as news — including advertorials and video interviews — explores the intrinsic power of the media to transform public perception and stand in for new forms of knowledge production. A viral sensation with broad social impact, “The New Color” continues to attract significant online attention. Hundreds of visitors come across the website a week, having been referred to it by online search engines and social media. The people most intrigued and deluded by the so-called discovery send an email
to contact@thenewcolor.net, the fake company’s email, where they express their desire to see the colour, continued requests to buy and order a sample of it, express intentions of coming over to the laboratory located in Ashland, PA to see it, propose to involve it in their projects or express their interest in investment and more. These kinds of emails are received nearly daily, the Facebook page subscribers are growing, and Google search ‘New Color’ often delivers thenewcolor.net on top of the list.
Later In 2017, the project was followed with a supposedly ‘leaked video’ from the lab in which an attempt to capture the colour via the means of a smartphone camera failed due to the incapability of registering a colour that couldn’t be interpreted as a blend of red, green and blue (RGB).
A book was issued as documentation and an outcome of the in-intervention. It features nearly 200 selected emails received from fictional companies’ email addresses.”
