Friday Links: the fascinating secrets of color
Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org
We’ve been reading a lot of stories about color this week:
- White is often seen as emblematic of goodness and purity, but the story of how it got that way is neither good nor pure.
- What about black? What it represents changes as the methods of making the color evolve.
- You think that’s strange? How about this bombshell: Ancient languages didn’t have a word for blue, and there is evidence that they may not have seen it at all.
- Cambridge University Library recently digitized the first multicolor printed book, a 17th-century artist manual that was so fragile that it had previously never even been opened.
- How good are you at identifying colors? Find out with this challenging game, which tests your ability at perceiving properties such as hue and saturation. And here’s one just about hues. Too difficult for a Friday? Here’s an easier one.
- And here is color perception in action: Researchers discovered that individuals with cognitive impairment consumed more food and liquid when they were served in brightly colored vessels, so a designer created special tableware for Alzheimer’s patients.
- Perhaps now you’re ready to watch an optical illusion video that will make you see black & white in full color.