The University Art Museum, in conjunction with its current exhibition of paintings, is hosting a series of Thursday evening events that explore color. On November 1st, at 6:30PM, they’re presenting the BBC documentary film, Do You See What I See? On November 8, also starting at 6:30PM, they’re presenting an interactive conversation with Jeff Atherton, Assistant Professor in the Foundation Program at the CSULB School of Art.
This Thursday, October 25, at 7PM, they’re presenting a conversation about color and cognition titled, Imagination and Objective Reality: What’s color got to do with it? The panelists include Dr. Kimberly A. Jameson, a cognitive scientist at the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at UCI, Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel, a Professor of Philosophy at UCR, Dr. Charles Wallis, Professor of Philosophy at CSULB, and the co-founder and Director of the Center for Cognitive Science, and Dr. Wayne T. Wright, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at CSULB.
According to Wright, the panel has, “a nice mix of empirical sophistication, technological expertise, and an artist’s perspective on things that the other panelists might look at in a largely non-aesthetic way.”
Human beings base a great deal of their understanding and knowledge of the world on their perception of color, yet most people don’t notice that their brains are actually creating stability in a highly variable color environment.
“It’s not entirely clear what remains constant as viewing conditions change,” Wright said. “There are also questions about the basic ‘kinds’ of color experience. Color is often broken down into three dimensions: hue, saturation, and lightness. However, it’s quite plausible that the situation is much more complicated than that, which affects how we should conceive of what our color experience is like and what the visual system is doing with the information that comes in through the eyes.
“And there are lingering questions about things like the ‘structural relations’ amongst the colors. Red, green, blue, and yellow are commonly thought to be basic hues out of which all other hue experiences are compounded, and which alone are capable of having ‘unique’ variants. For example, a unique green that has no tinge of blue or yellow in it. However, it seems plausible (at least to me and a few other folks) that some of the allegedly compound colors admit of ‘unique’ variants, too. For example, a unique orange that doesn’t look to be some part red and some part yellow. That’s not at all an exhaustive list, either! There are questions about how much one’s previous knowledge, or language, affects one’s color experience or responses to color stimuli.”
Despite the fact that biology determines the sense perception of color, and physics the nature of light, there seems to be cultural influences as well.
“There’s some empirical evidence that says that certain groups of perceivers, grouped together along language lines, are capable of, or at least prone to, make certain color discriminations or judgments that other perceivers are not. The World Color Survey, and the research of Berlin & Kay, kicked off a range of discussions and debates about the differences across cultures when it comes to how they categorize colors. Kimberly Jameson, who is on the panel, is especially knowledgeable about this.”
Some artists rely on an almost scientific application of color theory principles in their work, and others work with color more intuitively. This, Wright believes, may be reflective of the underlying cognitive processes.
“Certainly, how artists manage to elicit various perceptual effects from combining colors on a canvas, or other media, in certain ways should be informative about what the visual system is up to when it processes color. And I think our emotional and cognitive responses to color stimuli, which artists can manipulate, should be taken into account when we think about the role that color experience plays in our mental lives.”
The panel will explore a number of topics related to what Wright describes as the inter-observer variability in color perception.
“For example, going back to the unique hues, if you were tasked with picking out a color chip that looked uniquely green to you, it is possible that your choice would be the same chip that someone else would pick out as her unique blue. That sort of inter-observer variation, and less extreme forms of it, is fascinating, if we think about color vision either from the perspective of an artist trying to produce a work that looks a certain way, or from the perspective of trying to understand why we evolved to have the kind of color vision we have, or from the perspective of trying to understand how the brain produces color experience.
“And then there are the differences between human color vision and that of other creatures. It will be interesting to hear different views on what we are to make of those differences, and what it says about what benefits color vision provides.
“I’m especially interested in hearing the perspectives of a technology scientist and an artist on color. I’ve never had the opportunity before to hear, first-hand, what they might have to say about the nature of color and color experience, and how they think of color in connection with what they are trying to achieve with their work.”
Despite the rather technical nature of the language, Wright believes that the conversation will be accessible to anyone.
“While there are some technical matters that will have to be explained to get certain points across, or to introduce certain issues, I think they can be explained in an intuitive manner. For example, the bit about differences in unique hue choices is something that non-experts can understand pretty quickly. The same is true when it comes to explaining some of the differences between, say, human color vision and bird color vision. And the basic question of whether color really exists out in the world, independently of our minds, is pretty accessible.
“Color is a particularly good topic to have this sort of discussion around, because it involves all these issues that are really fascinating, but that can be grasped pretty quickly. Most of us have the experience of disagreeing with someone else over the color of something. From what I hear when I talk to people, it’s pretty common to wonder about the “real” color of an object that looks one way under light X but another way under light Y. And I would imagine that art enthusiasts are particularly likely to find these discussions accessible, given the range of experiences, and perhaps frustrations, they have had with color.”
Wright’s interest in color arose from his more general interest in phenomenal consciousness, the part of our mental lives that ‘feel some way.’
“The issues surrounding color perception are representative of those connected to many other perceptual qualities. And, since I’m fascinated by the relationship between the world as it is ‘out there’ and the world as it is represented in our experience, I thought that color would be excellent to focus on in my research.”
Admission to all three events is free, but parking permits are required for all school lots. For information about current exhibitions and museum hours, visit CSULB.edu/UAM.
Read my interview with Patrick Wilson, whose paintings are part of the current exhibition at UAM.