The Illusion of Colour

I have been thinking about how we as humans see colour.

As mad as it will seem to most – I have come to understand that we actually see no colour at all, in fact colour in a real state does not exist.

Instead colour is the result of the minds interpretation of the sequence of signals that pound our retinas as light and here’s how.

First we have to understand that light is Electromagnetic radiation which has huge bandwidths and varying wavelengths. Some of those Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) wavelengths can be received by the human eye and some cannot. In total 380 to 750 nm of EMR can be received by the cones and rods of the average human eye, which is a very small amount from the physical EMR available which is currently recorded to be 1pm -100Mm (1picameter – 100 Megameter).

In this sense the eye is in fact a EMR receiver no different to the satellite dish on your roof but instead tuned to receive a particular set of wavelengths, which is known as “visible light”.

When those signals hit the rods and cones the information gets sorted out with the receptive cells behind them called bipolar-cells, amacrine-cells and ganglion cells. These cells in turn send spiked signals to the receptive area in the brain which then decodes the signal (this is where the signal also gets lost to scientists) and gets interpreted by the “mind”. ["Mind" being the unexplained awareness of self-interpretation-will-recall-and-forethought of a living being.] It is believed that the point where the signal is lost that a common phenomenon within all human brains interprets the signal into physical colour/s. Which the rest of the brain then records as such and the “mind” accepts. These colours also include ones that have no signal at all such as Magenta which has no place in the EMR scope (as was described by Newton, Magenta is the only color that does not exist as a single wavelength of light, rather it is a mean result of two separate wavelengths). In fact Magenta can be used as evidence to prove that the mind invents colour as a means of interpretation of received EMR signal.

Whilst researching some of the above points I came across an interesting phenomenon called Synesthesia. Synesthesia is where other senses cause colours to be present for the receiver of the sensed happenings around them, be them aural; physical; gastronomical or via the olfactory.

Image listening to your friend talking and every time their voice hits a middle C, you get a flash of blue. Or even every time you eat an orange your world seems greener!

A study was carried out on Synesthesia using positron-emission tomography (PET) scans. In turn researchers have determined that the fusiform gyrus, in the temporal lobe of the brain, houses independent areas responsible for numbers and letters, and words. And that they In fact believe that the colour-recognition area of the brain is right next to the numbers- and letters-processing section. Thus hyperactivity in this region or over development can and does lead to Synesthesia.

Though I have gone off on a tangent here it certainly does pose the question about the existence of colour in our mind and what the world would truly look like if we could truly see it!

On the other hand a conundrum arises and horribly so.

Say I have a red box and I place that amongst 6 individuals and asked them what colour it is, they would most likely say in consensus that the box is red. But what would happen if say someone sees it as being blue and another as being orange etc., what then would be the scenario? most likely huge debates and lots of abuse given out about how bad the other person’s eyes are etc. But what if the reality IS that we DO see the same colour as a different colour but we have simply learned by presentation from our elders to recognize it as being a “red”,”blue” or “green”?

If we think for a moment beyond the confusion of what is colour and study black and white images and try to understand why black and white images relay so much more emotion, we can subtly start to understand the waste of time that our brains suffer trying to decipher EMR just to make the world a prettier place for the viewer.

The illusion of colour consumes photographers far and wide as they try to master it and try to present more and more and more of it, and yet in a single gray scale more can be said than a million words could ever say or a billion colours could ever paint.

It’s just a thought.