Comments on: COLORS!

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 06:35:19 +0000

I think I said ‘color’ about fifty million times in that comment, and only a number that outrageous could possibly be true.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 06:33:03 +0000

Emmas: I think about that too, because I think that would be totally awesome. Can you imagine all the arguments that would get started if we realized it was actually true though? If we got to see color through someone else and found out the truth; I think wars would be started over it.

I’m also really interested in how other people see color. I’m taking Drawing 2: COLOR this semester and we’re applying color theory to our drawings/paintings. My problem is that I don’t see color that well and I have a lot of trouble mixing colors. After trying to recreate a Euan Uglow painting I realized how many different colors and infinite values of color can be within an object that appears to be only one color. Like seeing green in a shadow when it seems like there shouldn’t be green there at all.

I also think it’s weird to hate or love a certain color. I feel as a kid I loved bright colors and purple was my favorite color. Then as I grew older I favored simple, dull color combinations, like dark green, brown, and grey and I hated bright, vibrant colors. Now I feel totally opposite that again and I really appreciate color. Seeing certain colors next to each other can be totally exciting for some reason, and I’ve never felt that before. I painted something earlier that had an deep aqua color on top of a dull magenta and I thought it was an amazing relationship. In the past I would have never tried that. I guess what I’m saying is: seeing color has a lot to do with our experiences; right now I hate purple, but I’m learning to see it again differently. LONGESTCOMMENTEVERTHEEND.

By: patrick

patrick — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 06:10:52 +0000

I just realized there are several way to describe color space and if anyone cares I was referencing the CIE 1931 color space which is the only one that is formally encompasses all colors humans can see. The Color wheel that is normally taught is an additive RGB color space that cannot represent every color we can see but is good enough for most purposes.

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:00:26 +0000

My favorite color is blue.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:42:11 +0000

katie – yeah the study found that in general if the language has more color categories it remember and emphasizes color difference my drastically. What I found interesting was the fact that the study was one one had very relativistic but on the other hand universal. Also, Humans can feel electrical fields too, but maybe not as precisely as sharks. I thought it was interesting

Emma- yeah the way that they deal with that is not trying to describe green (beyond wavelength numbers) but define two colors as equal if people can’t tell the difference between them.

By: Emma

Emma — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:38:47 +0000

NO WAY, Emma! I totally think about that EXACT SAME THING. Wierd.

Also, the bit that I understood of that, Patrick, was pretty cool and interesting!

By: Emma Barnum

Emma Barnum — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:08:44 +0000

I always wondered if we all see the same color… like grass is green, but what if green to me looks different than it does to you. Like, if my perception of grass was actually purple or something, and yours was red, but since grass is green, we both call what we see green. I don’t know if that makes sense, and I assure you I’m not high, it’s just something that I’ve pondered over in the past…

By: Katie (Jones)

Katie (Jones) — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:03:43 +0000

That is really interesting! The English vs. Dani color categories reminds me of something we learned in Psych about memory and language. English really only has one word for the color yellow, in its basic sense, but I think it was Swahili (maybe?) divides yellow into two kinds of yellow, a lighter yellow and a darker yellow or something like that, and they have two seperate words for them. When shown a series of colors and told to describe if it was dark or lighter, the Swahili subjects were way more likely to remember whether the yellow cards they were shown were lighter or darker than the English subjects.. So basically because of their language, they were better able to remember that specific thing. I just think it’s interesting how language affects the ways we remember or think in general. There was a study that showed that bilingual people get different scores on the same personality test depending on what language they take it in… it’s weird. I wonder why different cultures/languages categorize colors in different ways?

It’s also weird to think about the different sense animals have, and the senses we’re missing out on. I remember when I first learned that sharks can sense electric fields, I was like “whoa!” I mean, I just wonder what that’d be like. Or when you see how much larger the light spectrum is than what we can see… anyway, sorry my comment was less about percieving colors/thinking philosophically about the nature of color and more about.. stuff I learned in high school/saw on the discovery channel when I was 10.