Where we're going, we don't need colour wheels
November 19, 2024 2:35 PM Subscribe
The Colour Literacy Project "The Colour Literacy Project is a 21st century initiative that recognizes colour as a meta-discipline. Our mission is to provide state-of-the-art educational resources that strengthen the bridges between the sciences, arts, design and humanities in order to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future. " [via: Is color even real?]
One (meaning me) has to wonder if they cover how color is perceived by non-English speakers. Colors have different meanings depending on where you are in the world, as I understand it.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 3:38 PM on November 19, 2024 [4 favorites]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 3:38 PM on November 19, 2024 [4 favorites]
One of the things I loved most about my partner was that we saw colours the same way, and identified them the same way. It's kind of a "Synchronize Swatches!" thing but it was pleasing to know that we saw the same thing.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 4:46 PM on November 19, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 4:46 PM on November 19, 2024 [2 favorites]
This is cool. I can link to it when I want to say crazy things about color.
Color is meaningless. I don't believe that anyone has a favorite color, or that favorite colors are even possible, because context so important. That said, my favorite colors are non-chromatic. My second favorite colors are made out of single wavelengths. Colors made out of wide distributions of wavelengths are lame. Anyway, if I am forced to pick a favorite color, I usually say something like "IKB" or "Pantone 292" because I think those are irritating and funny ways to say blue.
posted by surlyben at 6:01 PM on November 19, 2024 [3 favorites]
Color is meaningless. I don't believe that anyone has a favorite color, or that favorite colors are even possible, because context so important. That said, my favorite colors are non-chromatic. My second favorite colors are made out of single wavelengths. Colors made out of wide distributions of wavelengths are lame. Anyway, if I am forced to pick a favorite color, I usually say something like "IKB" or "Pantone 292" because I think those are irritating and funny ways to say blue.
posted by surlyben at 6:01 PM on November 19, 2024 [3 favorites]
I'm curious if these exercises can help me, a forty-year-old who isn't colorblind but feels "color tone-deaf", have a better understanding of how colors go together or don't, something I've never been able to understand. A big motivation for being a teen goth was that my mom was always nagging me that I was going to school in outfits that "didn't match", and we got very frustrated that I didn't understand what she meant and she couldn't understand how to communicate it to me. All-black solved this problem.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:07 PM on November 19, 2024
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:07 PM on November 19, 2024
Concluding paras of Is color even real?:
What it all comes down to is the referent you choose to attach to the word "reality".
If you're using the same referent as the one I personally attach to the word "universe", which is the thing that every thing is either part of or identical to, then obviously we're all living in the same reality as a simple matter of definition.
If you're using the same referent as the one I personally attach to the word "worldview", which is the model that an organism continually constructs and updates in order to facilitate locally useful predictions about the behaviour of the universe, then obviously each of us has our own.
If you're using the same referent as the one I personally attach to the word "culture", which is a collection of worldviews that share enough common features to facilitate rapid updating of worldviews across individuals, then obviously we share that to a large though not complete extent.
Madness might result from refusing to make any distinction between these referents for no better reason than that all of them and more are frequently attached to the word "reality" depending on context.
Slightly less obviously, questions such as whether your red could actually be my blue amount to nothing more than invitations to construct Just So stories that might feel pleasing but have no actual explanatory or predictive power, since the only way to get a definitive answer would involve exchanging or sharing our actual subjectivities as opposed to our models of them. This is an activity precluded by the very nature of subjectivity: I am not you and never will or could be. As Ryvar put it so neatly here:
posted by flabdablet at 4:28 AM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]
As Emery and Webster note in their 2020 paper, even our own visual reality can change dramatically over time through normal development, disease or aging, and according to whether we’re looking at something in the center of our gaze or in our peripheral vision. These variations within our own reality can be as great as the variation between individuals: “[I]t is important to emphasize that this physiological variation can be equally dramatic within the individual, across both time and space …Thus even an individual observer “sees” the world through a visual system that is very different at different times and locations,” the researchers write.Ehh. She says madness, I say clarity. Potaytoe, tomahto.
This way lies madness.
If you stare too hard at a color while wondering if every one of us is living in our own completely distinct reality — or if there are completely distinct realities living within every one of us! — well may you hear those alarm bells ring.
What it all comes down to is the referent you choose to attach to the word "reality".
If you're using the same referent as the one I personally attach to the word "universe", which is the thing that every thing is either part of or identical to, then obviously we're all living in the same reality as a simple matter of definition.
If you're using the same referent as the one I personally attach to the word "worldview", which is the model that an organism continually constructs and updates in order to facilitate locally useful predictions about the behaviour of the universe, then obviously each of us has our own.
If you're using the same referent as the one I personally attach to the word "culture", which is a collection of worldviews that share enough common features to facilitate rapid updating of worldviews across individuals, then obviously we share that to a large though not complete extent.
Madness might result from refusing to make any distinction between these referents for no better reason than that all of them and more are frequently attached to the word "reality" depending on context.
Slightly less obviously, questions such as whether your red could actually be my blue amount to nothing more than invitations to construct Just So stories that might feel pleasing but have no actual explanatory or predictive power, since the only way to get a definitive answer would involve exchanging or sharing our actual subjectivities as opposed to our models of them. This is an activity precluded by the very nature of subjectivity: I am not you and never will or could be. As Ryvar put it so neatly here:
Lived experiences are not transferable, they shape who and what we are at the neural level, therefore unless our minds exist outside our neurology qualia are always context-specific to the individual experiencing them.If any reader is aware of reliable evidence for the existence of minds without neurology, I'd be interested to learn of it; for the 62 years I've existed on this planet it has continued to escape my attention despite having been only ten years away for all of that time.
posted by flabdablet at 4:28 AM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]
Slightly less obviously, questions such as whether your red could actually be my blue amount to nothing more than invitations to construct Just So stories that might feel pleasing but have no actual explanatory or predictive power
There is an argument from parsimony that has some predictive power here. We are all the same species, the hardware is the same, the simplest explanation is that the rest of the perceptual system is the same. When it's different, as in color blind people, it seems to be different in ways that are consistent with everyone having basically the same perceptual system. You can even extend it to other species. Animals with vertebrate style camera eyes are likely to percieve color in similar ways, because thier visual systems all evolved from the same visual system (though millions of years of evolution may well have led to things like thier red being my blue), but it would be surprising if compound eyed animals didn't have completely different experiences of color.
posted by surlyben at 9:11 AM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]
There is an argument from parsimony that has some predictive power here. We are all the same species, the hardware is the same, the simplest explanation is that the rest of the perceptual system is the same. When it's different, as in color blind people, it seems to be different in ways that are consistent with everyone having basically the same perceptual system. You can even extend it to other species. Animals with vertebrate style camera eyes are likely to percieve color in similar ways, because thier visual systems all evolved from the same visual system (though millions of years of evolution may well have led to things like thier red being my blue), but it would be surprising if compound eyed animals didn't have completely different experiences of color.
posted by surlyben at 9:11 AM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]
There are obvious structural similarities across perceptual systems, but that doesn't help address the question of whether the experiences facilitated by those perceptual systems are likewise similar.
We can of course make up assorted plausible sounding Just So Stories about that, but the fact remains that the whole point of subjective experience is that it is private to the experience haver. Experiences are about the way information is interpreted to at least as great an extent as the way it's delivered, and the fact remains that we do not and cannot have any way to compare each other's interpretations directly; the comms infrastructure required for any such comparison is simply not there.
Closest we can get is to compare such behaviours (including verbal behaviours) as our own experiences give rise to. So if you point to a thing that looks red to you, and I look at the same thing and agree that it looks red to me as well, really all that does is speak to the degree to which we share gross perceptual function and culture. It offers no evidence at all about whether the specific patterns of neural activity that occur inside you on perception of either that red thing in particular or red things in general overlap with mine in any meaningful way.
Personally I doubt that they would, but that's merely my own Just So Story.
posted by flabdablet at 11:42 AM on November 20, 2024
We can of course make up assorted plausible sounding Just So Stories about that, but the fact remains that the whole point of subjective experience is that it is private to the experience haver. Experiences are about the way information is interpreted to at least as great an extent as the way it's delivered, and the fact remains that we do not and cannot have any way to compare each other's interpretations directly; the comms infrastructure required for any such comparison is simply not there.
Closest we can get is to compare such behaviours (including verbal behaviours) as our own experiences give rise to. So if you point to a thing that looks red to you, and I look at the same thing and agree that it looks red to me as well, really all that does is speak to the degree to which we share gross perceptual function and culture. It offers no evidence at all about whether the specific patterns of neural activity that occur inside you on perception of either that red thing in particular or red things in general overlap with mine in any meaningful way.
Personally I doubt that they would, but that's merely my own Just So Story.
posted by flabdablet at 11:42 AM on November 20, 2024
Please note that I am not claiming that there is direct evidence one way or the other about whether your red is my blue. But it would be extraordinary if the experiential systems of two creatures of the same species were not similar for the same reasons that the gross perceptual systems are similar. Experience and interpretation are real things that happen in the real world, so they are subject to the same physical laws and evolutionary pressures as anything else. In principle they are as subject to investigation as anything else, though I agree that in practice any such investigation is likely to be difficult.
posted by surlyben at 12:36 PM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by surlyben at 12:36 PM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]
As an optical physicist, I like the idea of this, but the web site itself doesn't seem too well organized. It took a lot of clicking to get to this page.
I would start with the idea that light is a wave (electric and magnetic fields chasing each other around at light speed), and the idea that some wavelengths produce a response in our eyes. I would start with rainbows and prisms and white light.
I would talk about light sensitive proteins and rods and cones, and then about the different types of cones, sensitive to red, green, and blue. I would mention that "yellow" corresponds to a certain set of wavelengths, but for most of us, our eyes can't tell the difference between a true yellow light (which gets a response from both red and green receptors) and some mix of red and green lights. I'd magnify some computer display of yellow object to make the point. I'd talk about tetrochromats (mentioend at that link) and the idea that CAN tell the difference between yellow and red+green. I'd talk about what it means that color blind people have only two receptors, effectively, instead of three. I'd probably bring in some Oliver Sacks.
Then I'd get into how color photography works, talk about infrared and ultraviolet cameras, about how some animals can see in those wavelengths, and what the world might look like to them. And about how humans can them some too, if they're really bright -- there's no sharp cut off to the edges of our perception, and there is lots of variation. I might talk about the advantages of being able to see ultraviolet for insects, and for humans, the advantages of being able to tell if fruit is ripe, and the contrary advantages of great night vision and poor color distinction for predators who hunt at night.
It feels premature the talk about how color is perceived by the mind or classified by a culture before you've established what color is.
I might show people how bad their own color vision is in dim light, which most people don't even realize because their brains are filling in the colors they expect to see. And then we could get into how different kinds of lighting and different surroundings can affect color perceptions, and all the great optical illusions you can build around this.
And then we'd have the context to talk about how color affects our emotions, or whatever. I guess I'm saying they have a different idea of fundamentals than I do.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:02 PM on November 20, 2024 [4 favorites]
I would start with the idea that light is a wave (electric and magnetic fields chasing each other around at light speed), and the idea that some wavelengths produce a response in our eyes. I would start with rainbows and prisms and white light.
I would talk about light sensitive proteins and rods and cones, and then about the different types of cones, sensitive to red, green, and blue. I would mention that "yellow" corresponds to a certain set of wavelengths, but for most of us, our eyes can't tell the difference between a true yellow light (which gets a response from both red and green receptors) and some mix of red and green lights. I'd magnify some computer display of yellow object to make the point. I'd talk about tetrochromats (mentioend at that link) and the idea that CAN tell the difference between yellow and red+green. I'd talk about what it means that color blind people have only two receptors, effectively, instead of three. I'd probably bring in some Oliver Sacks.
Then I'd get into how color photography works, talk about infrared and ultraviolet cameras, about how some animals can see in those wavelengths, and what the world might look like to them. And about how humans can them some too, if they're really bright -- there's no sharp cut off to the edges of our perception, and there is lots of variation. I might talk about the advantages of being able to see ultraviolet for insects, and for humans, the advantages of being able to tell if fruit is ripe, and the contrary advantages of great night vision and poor color distinction for predators who hunt at night.
It feels premature the talk about how color is perceived by the mind or classified by a culture before you've established what color is.
I might show people how bad their own color vision is in dim light, which most people don't even realize because their brains are filling in the colors they expect to see. And then we could get into how different kinds of lighting and different surroundings can affect color perceptions, and all the great optical illusions you can build around this.
And then we'd have the context to talk about how color affects our emotions, or whatever. I guess I'm saying they have a different idea of fundamentals than I do.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:02 PM on November 20, 2024 [4 favorites]
my mom was always nagging me that I was going to school in outfits that "didn't match", and we got very frustrated that I didn't understand what she meant and she couldn't understand how to communicate it to me
Obviously this is pretty subjective. I used to think it was totally subjective, but then I had a colleague who made slides with figures in shades of bright red and hot pink, and I thought "this is objectively bad."
I think now that there are a couple of real rules, but this is just based off my experience as a viewer of power point slides and of people wearing clothes, not my training as an optical physicist.
1) If you use bright colors, expect them to draw the viewers' attention. Don't use a lot of different bright colors unless you want the viewer to find the experience a little bit overwhelming, visually "loud." (Sometimes that's what you're going for, though!) High contrast has the same effect, so big blocks of black and white together can also be a bid for attention.
2) Colors that are close but don't quite match are visually confusing and thus maybe a little stressful to look at, for some of us. (Especially when they are bright. Which is why hot pink and bright red may be a bad combination. Even different shades of gray worn together can be mildly annoying, though.)
With those rules you can dress or make slides confidently. Stick mostly to neutrals, but make sure they're visually distinct from each other. Use color and contrast sparingly, to draw attention. It's not so much that there are particular colors that don't "go together," really. It's just that vivid hues and high contrast draw lots of attention, and sometimes you don't want that attention.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:25 PM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]
Obviously this is pretty subjective. I used to think it was totally subjective, but then I had a colleague who made slides with figures in shades of bright red and hot pink, and I thought "this is objectively bad."
I think now that there are a couple of real rules, but this is just based off my experience as a viewer of power point slides and of people wearing clothes, not my training as an optical physicist.
1) If you use bright colors, expect them to draw the viewers' attention. Don't use a lot of different bright colors unless you want the viewer to find the experience a little bit overwhelming, visually "loud." (Sometimes that's what you're going for, though!) High contrast has the same effect, so big blocks of black and white together can also be a bid for attention.
2) Colors that are close but don't quite match are visually confusing and thus maybe a little stressful to look at, for some of us. (Especially when they are bright. Which is why hot pink and bright red may be a bad combination. Even different shades of gray worn together can be mildly annoying, though.)
With those rules you can dress or make slides confidently. Stick mostly to neutrals, but make sure they're visually distinct from each other. Use color and contrast sparingly, to draw attention. It's not so much that there are particular colors that don't "go together," really. It's just that vivid hues and high contrast draw lots of attention, and sometimes you don't want that attention.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:25 PM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]
"I learned to look at hands, which I'd never looked at before. And instead of just looking at houses and trees I learned to look at houses and trees against the sky. And I learned also that shadows are not black but coloured." The learning outcomes from two years 'wasted' in Paris as an art student; from Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:26 PM on November 20, 2024
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:26 PM on November 20, 2024
it would be extraordinary if the experiential systems of two creatures of the same species were not similar for the same reasons that the gross perceptual systems are similar
I disagree with that. It seems to me that if "experiential system" is to refer to something that's usefully distinguishable from "perceptual system", the experiential system of any given organism would be built up in a way far more sensitive to that particular organism's specific life history than to its species's evolutionary history.
then we could get into how different kinds of lighting and different surroundings can affect color perceptions, and all the great optical illusions you can build around this
Dan McClellan uses a particularly striking example of just such an illusion to make a point about intuitive cognition in a video recently posted to the front page.
posted by flabdablet at 6:50 PM on November 20, 2024
I disagree with that. It seems to me that if "experiential system" is to refer to something that's usefully distinguishable from "perceptual system", the experiential system of any given organism would be built up in a way far more sensitive to that particular organism's specific life history than to its species's evolutionary history.
then we could get into how different kinds of lighting and different surroundings can affect color perceptions, and all the great optical illusions you can build around this
Dan McClellan uses a particularly striking example of just such an illusion to make a point about intuitive cognition in a video recently posted to the front page.
posted by flabdablet at 6:50 PM on November 20, 2024
In principle they are as subject to investigation as anything else
I thoroughly distrust "in principle"; it's always struck me as a rhetorical move with no purpose beyond propping up exactly the kind of essentially superfluous belief that makes honest inquiry and critical thinking even harder than it needs to be.
Every time I read "in principle", what I instantly hear in my head is Anna Russell singing "things would be so different, if they were not as they are", though I am willing to allow as how that might be an idiosyncratic feature of my own experiential system.
posted by flabdablet at 7:06 PM on November 20, 2024
I thoroughly distrust "in principle"; it's always struck me as a rhetorical move with no purpose beyond propping up exactly the kind of essentially superfluous belief that makes honest inquiry and critical thinking even harder than it needs to be.
Every time I read "in principle", what I instantly hear in my head is Anna Russell singing "things would be so different, if they were not as they are", though I am willing to allow as how that might be an idiosyncratic feature of my own experiential system.
posted by flabdablet at 7:06 PM on November 20, 2024
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Whites: Candida albicans is an off-white or pure-white fungus, for example. Neither is as snow-white as nivalis. Milk white lacteus otoh has a touch of blue, while chalk-white cretaceus has a hint of grey and is definitely matt. Argenteus is a silvery white with a lustre. cremeus or eborinus are creamy because there is an undertone of yellow.
Greys: we all know that gray is darker than grey, of course. In Latin (going in the opposite direction from more white to more black) we have cineraceus / cinereus ashy, griseus pearly, schistaceus slatey, plumbeus leaden . Stearn throws murinus mousy and fumosus smokey in with the greys.
etc. etc.
Seems like a blunt instrument compared to #00d800; #FFA500; #00ffff; but mnemonically handier?
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:33 PM on November 19, 2024 [7 favorites]