The Colour of Drones

“The drone’s aura blanched briefly with anger, then settled to grey frustration mixed with spots of purple contrition. It quickly rippled into yellow-green, indicating mellowness and friendliness, hatched with bands of red to show it was taking this as a bit of joke.”

/Look to Windward, p.317

Are you as curious as I am as to what exacly these drones mean with their colours? If you know of any references to it in any of Iain Banks’ The Culture novels or short stories, please write me <zrajm@klingonska.org> a letter and tell me where.
It is my intention to analyze these colours somewhat further (this because I have actually thought of creating a colour-based “body language” myself—this is one of the main reasons for me reading Banks today at all. When I spoke of “my” language with a friend of mine [Thomas Gylfe] he said it reminded him of Iain Banks drones. And I just had to read something. I started with Use of Weapons and ended up getting caught...)

Red · Orange · Yellow · Green · Blue · Indigo · Violet

Colour		Expression	Reference
	white	anger	PoG pp.15, 46, 47, 111; Exc pp.102, 106, 285; LtW p.324
	grey / grey-white (deep-grey)	displeasure, frustration (darker = more frustrated)	PoG pp.9, 12, 62, 91; Exc pp.125, 126, 179, 285; LtW p.318, 324
	rosy / vaguely rosy	humour	PoG pp.19, 153; Exc pp.175, 221
	red	humorous pleasure, pleasure, happiness, laugh	PoG pp.10, 46, 47, 77
	orange / orange-red	well-being	PoG pp.13, 95
	yellow-green	mellow approachability, calm friendliness	PoG pp.110, 111, 123; Exc p.103
	green	friendliness	PoG p.45
	blue	formal	PoG pp.9, 13, 91; Exc p.107, 328
	aquamarine	modesty	LtW p.24
	purple	contrition	PoG pp.13, 110; LtW p.21
	brown	displeasure, ill-humor	PoG pp.9, 10, 13, 91; Exc p.285
	mirror / silver	ostrentatiously uncommucable, do-not-disturb	PoG pp.15, 110
Uninterpreted References
	“frosty blue” / “a frostily blue Churt Lyne”		PoG p.15; Exc p.179
	“Its gunmetal aura indicated puzzlement.”		PoG p.15; LtW p.20
	“dully red”		PoG p.16
	“its fields bright blue and striped yellow”		PoG p.31
	“grey yellow with resignation”		PoG p.114
	“gone black-body”		PoG p.143
	“spot of rainbow light”—tight-beam communication with only one individual		PoG p.15
	“colored with embarressment”		Exc p.115
	“a soft blush of magenta” (busy)		LtW p.15
	“blue-grey” (politely held-in-check frustration)		LtW p.17
	“a sort of muddy cream colour” (embarressment) “The drone went muddy cream with embarressment.”		LtW pp.20, 316
	“ruddy orange” (?)		LtW p.21
	“aura rainbowed with brief suprise”		LtW p.24
	“extending a blue-ping field in an arc towards the Chelgrian’s shoulders”		LtW p.127
	“It’s aura fields looked very rosy against the cream of the couch it rested on.”		LtW p.128-129
	“Tersono’s aura field blushed with pleasure [...] The drone’s field collapsed back to a frosty blue”		LtW p.129
	“Kabe caught a hint of a bossoming purple field flattening and disspating in the direction of the girl”		LtW p.129
	“Tersono had positively glowed with rosy approval”		LtW p.133
	“Its aura positively shone with ruby light”		LtW p.304
	“Oh no! Tersono said, aura fields flashing briefly blue.”		LtW p.304
	“The drone’s aura field suddenly rainbowed with confusion.”		LtW p.316
	“[...] the machine said, wobbling in the air with what looked like anger, frustration or both. Its aura fields looked confused.”		LtW p.316
	“It flushed creamily rainbow with surprise and embarressment.”		LtW p.380

PoG	Player of Games
Exc	Excession
LtW	Look to Windward
UoW	Use of Weapons

 

‘Is that what those colours mean?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘That’s just grey, isn’t it?’ ‘I think technically it’s gunmetal.’ ‘And is that magenta?’ ‘More violet [...]’

/Look to Windward, p.211

Some Notes

When cleaning up and throwing away old papers, I found some notes from when I was (re-)reading Use of Weapons. I thought I’d better the stuff to this page. /zrajm [2007-01-23]

Use of Weapons

“the mixture of purple regret and gunmetal puzzlement looked distinctly unconvincing.” (UoW p.19)
“going dark with sorrow” (UoW p.19)
“The drone flashed rainbow in surprise” (UoW p.19)
“The blade broke cleanly on a bump of red coloured field just above the machine’s casing...” (UoW p.40)
“Both field components where shaded deep red, the colour of drone pleasure.” (UoW p.40)
“ME NEITHER it printed on it’s aura field, in letters of grey on a rosy background.” (UoW p.54)
“[...] glancing at the drone, which was keeping a standard pattern of formal blue on its aura field, apart from one large red dot on its side that probably only she could see; it was pulsating rapidly. When she noticed it she almost started laughing herself.” (UoW p.54)
“Sma was aware of Skaffen-Amitskaw glowing red just behind her.” (UoW p.55)
“[...] its aura field flashing the lurid orange that was used to signal Sick Drone in Extreme Distress.” (UoW p.56)
“Its red glowing field looked at least partially as a comment” (UoW p.77-78)
“field set a weird mixture of olive and purple, which she seemed to remember indicated Awe.” (UoW p.79)
“Skaffen-Amitskaw flashed a delicate shade of purple, imitating contrition” (UoW p.85)
“[...] as Skaffen-Amtiskaw’s fields went frosty.” (UoW p.101)
“Skaffen-Amtiskaw’s fields glowed pink with amusement.” (UoW p.122)
“‘Hmm?’ the machine said, its aura field flashing the pink he was beginning to identify as drone amusement.” (UoW p.256)

Is a Better Understanding Possible?

As you might have noticed, humans show emotions too: Somewhat akin to the body langugage of colour which Iain M. Banks’ drones display. I just figured it would be kinda interesting to compare the two phenomena, and maybe see if theres a 1:1 mapping of the two, in some subtle, yet intelligent way. ...but... I haven’t gotten around to doing that comparison in full—yet.
As some sort of preliminary though—here is a picture of “The Six Basic Facial Expressions” (proposed by Ekman [1992]) which might work as a sort of map over the cardinals of human emotional expressions.

Maybe it’s possible to map the colours of drones onto an “emotion wheel” to help understand the drone colour language more in-depth? Here’s an emotion wheel (as described in one of these “Theories of Emotions”) and a simple colour wheel compared:

They are not all that different, are they?
MIT have created a robot (head) called Kismet which displays emotion using facial expressions. However they felt it necessary to add arousal states (either “bored”, “interested”, or “calm”) to the above mix, resulting the following space of possible emotions:

The state describing Kismet’s mood consists of one point in this space, and as its mood changes, the face changes expression to reflect this. Just like the colours of a drone, or the expression on your face. Only, it can’t lie, of course (it most notably can’t lie badly, or in any other way display several conflicting emotions at once).

A Little Table

I made a little table of the colours occuring above, in the attempt to see if there’s a system to it. Down the middle you’ll find the colours of the rainbow, with darker versions on the left, and brighter versions on the right. I’ve separated the line of “brow / muddy cream / lurid orange” from “orange”, mostly based on the emotions the colour depict, it doesn’t seem to fit very well as-is either.
If anyone could suggest improvements, I would be happy to implement them.

black (?)	deep-grey / dark (sorrow)	grey (displeasure / frustation)	grey-white (?)	white (anger)
	brown (displeasure/ill-humor)	muddy cream (embarressment)	lurid orange (extreme distress)
	deep red / dully red (?)	red (happiness / laugh)	pink (amusement)
		ruddy orange (?)
		orange (wellbeing)
	grey yellow (resignation)	yellow (¿relaxed? / ¿calm?)
		yellow-green (mellowness / calm friendliness)
	olive (?)	green (friendliness)
		aquamarine (modesty)
gunmetal (puzzlement)	blue-grey (politely held-in-check frustation)	blue (formal)	frosty blue (?)
		violet (?)
		magenta (busy)
		purple (contrition / regret)
		rosy(?) (humour / approval)
		r   a   i   n   b   o   w  (surprise / confusion)
		olive   purple  (awe)

(The reference to “blue-grey” might not actually refer to one color, but could, as far as I understand, equally well be ment to refer to a pattern consisting of blue and grey components.)
How colours affect emotion might also be interesting reading.