Seeing in colour
Take a moment to look at your surroundings. What do you see? A colourful blanket on your couch. A pale blue sky with grey clouds. Your striped cat jumping on the burnished oak table. A white car splashed with mud driving by. All of the information about the shapes, sizes, colours, and motions of objects comes to us via light.
To make sense of all the information entering our eyes, from every location within our visual field, at every moment, our visual system does the remarkable feat of decoding and interpreting all of the light beams which enter our eyes, every fraction of a second. The ability to perceive in colour helps us understand our world visually, as it gives us information about the distribution of light entering our eyes. Colour helps us identify what we are seeing, allows us to discern boundaries between different objects, and can provide important immediate information about our environment like signalling danger.
Multiple factors affect how we see colour. Understanding how we see in colour is a complex and multi-faceted topic, which is not fully understood. Nonetheless there are a few key concepts which are fundamental for understanding colour perception, and are an important part of colour education foundations. First of all, to see colour, we need light. This source of light can: 1) enter our eyes directly; 2) illuminate objects in a scene and then reflect to our eyes; or 3) be transmitted through a transparent filter like a stained-glass window. Secondly, when we see coloured objects, they interact with the illuminating light beams in a variety of ways, and change the characteristics of light which ultimately enters our eyes. Finally, to see colour, we need ourselves, with our eyes, brain, and all their neurological connections.
Factors affecting colour perception.
This physiological response to light is further contextualized. In Part 1 of our Eye opener exercises, we experienced how the lighting conditions, surrounding colours and spatial context all played a role in how we perceive colours. These may be considered external contexts. We also contextualize colour internally, and less tangibly, with our memories, past experiences, emotional states, cultural backgrounds and languages. All of these factors play a role in colour perception, and contribute to its dynamic nature
