On Monday, September 7, at 6:00 p.m. , in the "Vincenzo Da Massa Carrara" conference room of the San Micheletto Monumental Complex ( Via San Micheletto, 3 ) in Lucca, Ugo Volli will deliver a keynote lecture on the topic "Homer's 'Green Honey': Colour in Perception, Arts, and Culture." This is the seventh event in a series of lectures organized by the Ragghianti Foundation, featuring internationally renowned scholars, and the first initiative to restart the program after the August break. Admission is free, subject to availability.

As Ugo Volli writes, common sense tells us that the world is colourful, that everything has its own colour, permanent over time except for physical-chemical changes; that, except in the case of pathological conditions, all human beings more or less perceive the same colours; that our eyes, photography, and to some extent painting reproduce them realistically; that colours have meanings in themselves (for example, black indicates mourning, white innocence, and green hope). All these beliefs are so widely shared that they appear to be obvious truths, but they are scientifically inaccurate, if not false. In reality, the phenomenon of colour vision depends on a highly complex perceptual process and is profoundly influenced by cultural and communicative factors. While it is true that the physiological mechanism of vision is similar in all standard human beings, perception is profoundly influenced by previous experience and cultural categorisation: that is, it has more the aspect of recognition than of pure knowledge of perceptual data. This means that there is a profound cultural (i.e. linguistic and technological) influence also on the way we see colours, as demonstrated by research in cognitive science and artificial intelligence.

Ugo Volli , formerly Professor of Text Semiotics and Philosophy of Communication at the University of Turin, is now an honorary professor there. He has worked at numerous Italian and international universities, including, for many years, those of Bologna, New York, Haifa, San Marino, and IULM in Milan. He was awarded an honorary degree by the New Bulgarian University and is a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Communication in Buenos Aires. He studies communication issues from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. He is the editor of Lexia and a member of the editorial boards of Versus, Interfaces numériques, The Journal of Literary Theory, and other journals.