Experience of Color

Experience of Color Information About the World Touching, tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing—these are the ways we get our information about the world, about where we live and where we work. But the world of humans is primarily a world of sights, with 90 percent of what we know of the world coming to us through our vision.1 What we see is color. Objects, landscapes, faces all register in our brains through the light that enters the eye, sent to us from a luminous —or light-producing—object (such as a red-hot iron or a glowing incandescent light) or as light reflects off a nonluminous object (such as a tree or a table). The eye’s retina absorbs the light and sends a signal, or sensation, to the brain. This sensation makes us aware of a characteristic of light, which is color. The visual equipment we use to see light and its characteristic color is the same for everybody, and when it’s working, it works very well— the National Bureau of Standards estimates that the human eye can distinguish over 10 million different colors. However, color does more than just give us objective information about our world: It affects how we feel. To know this, we need only recall how a string of grey, overcast days lowers our spirits or how working in a drab, dull room leaves us listless. With so much of what we know and feel coming from what we see, you’d think we’d all be experts on color. In a way, we are. No one has to tell you what you’re seeing or how you’re feeling as you sit in the glow of a late summer sunset. But how would you describe the pink of that sky? Dazzling? Fleshy? Glistening? Iridescent? The qualities we assign to our perceptions of colors—to the way they make us feel—are called indeterminate attributes. They cannot be measured; rather, they arise from our intuitive experience of color. These indeterminate attributes provide the mystery of color and range from the poetic language we use to express our perceptions of color to the psychological effects of color on our mood. Determinate attributes are another matter. They can be measured by various instruments and include hue, value, and chroma—(as some describe them) warm/cool, light/dark, and brilliant/dull colors. They have given rise to optics, a branch of science that analyzes the mechanisms we use to perceive color—the rods and cones on the © 2001 Herman Miller Inc ™ L, Z, and Y are among the trademarks of Herman Miller Inc. eye’s retina—and colorimetry, which measures the color systems human eye and brain play in sensing color. Color psychologist Heinrich developed to precisely communicate color. Frieling, writing about Goethe’s philosophy, says the poet “felt that Newton and the physicists who supported him failed to do justice to The mystery and the mechanics of color are tightly entwined. the experience of color in our everyday life, its dynamic flow, which We seldom see a single color in isolation, completely independent was as much a part of color as the mathematics of optics.”2 from the influence of other colors or other external factors, such as the light source, the surface of the object, and the surrounding The Poet’s Balanced View of Color objects. Also, we never perceive color without the modifying influences of psychological and symbolic factors. In other words, our response Goethe’s contemporaries scoffed at his emphasis on perception, to color depends on who we are and what our culture tells us certain the elements it involved (eye, brain, emotions, experiences), and his colors should mean. insistence upon the interdependence of science and art. Another hundred years passed before Goethe’s views were appreciated. Over As simple as it may seem on the surface, color has a depth that is the last 20 years, color educators have revived many of Goethe’s worth fathoming. The more we understand color, the more we can ideas and now credit him with anticipating much twentieth century appreciate the joy it brings to our lives and the better use we can research into color science and theory. make of it. That use can be as focused as knowing what to put on in the morning in order to look our best or as broad as knowing how Perhaps it is appropriate that a poet should have helped us achieve color in environments, particularly the office, can influence motivation a more balanced view of the complex activity of sensing color. and performance. As science professor Hazel Rossotti notes, “Not only are sensations of color affected by illness, injury and drugs, they depend on the Sensing Color area and shape of the object, its distance from the eye, its position relative to the eye, the intensity of the light, and the colors generated Walk into an office and what do you see? Well, if your eyes are open, by the rest of the visual field. Nor is the sensation dependent only on in one sense you see everything. Natural light streaming in through what is in front of the eye at one particular perception. And, since our the windows and artificial light from lamps flood into your eyes and experience of color is affected by our memory, by our knowledge of bounce off everything in the room and then into your eyes. But in what color some object really is, we could claim that our color sensations another sense, you see only what you want to see—the carpet, done are, in a sense, influenced by a lifetime of visual experiences.”3 in the same lush green as the one you just installed in the family room; the fluorescent blue of the pin the receptionist is wearing on The degree of complexity involved in sensing color is proof for many her red dress; the curious yellow of the reception seating fabric. that it is active, not passive. Biologist Nicholas Humphrey believes the active nature of sensing color comes from our desire for pleasure For centuries everyone, from Greek philosophers to Age of Reason and our need for survival: “If men take pleasure in looking at a particular scientists, considered only the first half of seeing—the mechanics. sight or hearing a particular sound we may expect that the They believed our eyes were merely receivers. Sir Isaac Newton consequences of their doing so—whatever they may be—are beneficial, (1642-1727) called them “visual equipment” that measures light though the benefits may well be indirect and the beneficiaries may waves much like a clock measures time. Consequently, most be quite unaware of them.”4 Humphrey adds that beyond helping us research involved optics, the branch of physics that describes how enjoy our lives, our ability to see color, like the glowing red of an light is produced, transmitted, detected, and measured. ember or the heavy black of a threatening sky, could have evolved only because it contributed to our biological survival. The scientists of Newton’s day regarded intellect as pure and sensory experience as morally suspect. That view was predominant until, Light allows us to sense color. To a large degree, sensing color depends about a hundred years after Newton, the German poet Johann on four key factors: 1) the spectral energy distribution of the light, Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) began arguing for the roles the i.e., the conditions under which the color is perceived; 2) the spectral Experience of Color 1 l characteristics of the object in terms of how much light it absorbs, The Eye Records Color Stimuli reflects, and transmits; 3) the sensitivity of the eye in registering light and then turning it into electrochemical impulses and sending them In considering the third factor upon which our perception of color via the optical nerve to the brain; and 4) the psychological factors, depends—eye-brain neurology—the focus turns from the world namely the experiences and the personality of the viewer, all of which around us to the world within. Light, whether from a luminous object affect how color is perceived. or reflected from the surface of a nonluminous object, enters our eyes and photochemically activates key nerve cells on the retinas Scientists define the first of these factors, light, as a form of radiant known as rods and cones. energy or, more precisely, electromagnetic energy, a category of energy that includes gamma rays at one end of the spectrum and radio Rods operate at low light levels—for example, at night or in a darkened, waves at the other. The light our visual system responds to in the windowless room—and sense blacks, whites, and greys, also called experience of seeing, called “visible radiant energy,” is a very small achromatic colors because they have no hue (the property of color portion of the spectrum, falling between infrared and ultraviolet that is perceived and measured on a scale ranging from red through radiation. Bands of visible radiant energy appear to us as color, and yellow, green, and blue to violet). The cones in our eyes operate at we call them light. higher light levels—for example, during the daytime or in a lighted room—and sense chromatic color, or hues. When the cones are Surfaces Define the Colors We See active during the day, the rods are dormant. At night, the rods take over and the cones rest. The second factor influencing our perception of color is the spectral characteristics of objects, sometimes called “surface” and “surround.” Three Types of Receptors Produce Our Colors How a surface reflects, absorbs, or transmits light and how the colors and textures surrounding the surface influence its color give Humans see color with three types of reception systems (red/green-, us the information we need to understand the objects we perceive.

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