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Brain

For every issue of BRAIN, artists and designers are given the simple, brief: to express a single colour for the cover image. BRAIN asked us to create the cover image for the MAY 2013 issue. Our brief was "Strawberry Red".

Discussions began with colour theory, light, reflection, refraction, etc. We talked about matter, and molecules. What was strawberry red if there was no light? We considered the sense of smell. Red is red, but if it smells like strawberry, maybe only then it is strawberry red. We decided to show red, and strawberry as our limitation, There is no specific strawberry red. Each strawberry is different and has a spectrum of reds. There is no such thing as strawberry red. Print with strawberries? To demonstrate the many of the reds of strawberry red we would print in large scale, with strawberries—a field painting of strawberry. This print would be created and experienced first hand under a standard type of lighting.

We covered 3 walls with a giant stencil which read "strawberry red" in Japanese ( 苺の赤,) And blasted huge amounts of strawberry purée through the stencil with a custom air-compressor powered "strawberry gun.” We removed the stencil to reveal the word against stark flat white. This was done at an art gallery so that the lights could be used to accurately view the result. Up close, in "strawberry fields'' one experienced a full range of strawberry reds. This is strawberry red.

Note: We used 40 kilos of strawberries which were deemed inedible.

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