Postmodernism

I found both the readings on postmodernism to be a little confusing. It makes sense that they would be confusing because the contradictory clash of old traditions and modern values is inherently confusing. One question I have regarding the readings is about the difference between places like Disneyland and downtown LA. Were the writers saying that Disneyland is "real" and LA is not? Or were they saying that both places are not real? I was kind of confused about what they were trying to say about that. But I really liked the depiction of new age forms of communication. We see things like that all the time in everyday life but never really stop to think about the origins.

Color Podcast

Color is such an interesting and fascinating concept. Thinking about colors for too long is enough to make your head hurt. When I was younger, I learned that butterflies can see more colors than humans. As a young child, this thought frustrated me to no end. I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that colors that I couldn't see existed. It is impossible to imagine colors you have never seen. The color podcast brought back these thoughts that haunted me as a child. It's kind of like asking the question: "how can you explain or describe color to someone who is blind?" It is nearly impossible.

It is easy to imagine a dog's world which is either in blue/yellow tones or is black and white. It is simple to eliminate color from our palette but incredibly difficult to add color. While humans normally have 3 color receptors, creatures like butterflies have 5 or 6, and even more unbelievable, mantis shrimp have 16 color receptors. A creature so small and insignificant lives in a more vibrant world than humans. But apparently, there are some women who have 4 color receptors. The podcast discussed how hard it is to determine the accuracy of this fact.

We don't think about how much color affects our every day life. Color determines what clothes we wear and what foods we eat. This podcast reminded me of an experiment I once saw. People ate skittles blindfolded and were unable to differentiate between flavors even though each skittle has a different flavor. Humans associate colors with mood. People associate with different colors and tend to gravitate towards different colors. I started to think, "what if I am seeing green but another sees 'red'?" How do we know that we are all seeing the same colors with the same names?

There has been a trend on the internet for a while now where people post an image and then debate the colors of the object. This was first seen with "the dress" where some people saw black and blue and others saw white and gold. "The dress" sparked arguments all over. How could someone be seeing something so opposite of me? Last week an image of a shoe went around the internet. Some said it was white and pink, and others said mint and grey. People were again divided. How do you determine who is correct when so many people are convinced on what colors they are seeing?

Whitescapes

The first photo is a picture of the bottom of a frosting can against the dry-erase white board in my living room. It was taken with the lights on and no flash. The second photo is the same image but taken with the lights off and with the flash of my camera on. Although the can of frosting and white board are classified as white, they all look different in both images. The contrast of the frosting can makes both the backgrounds look grey rather than white. The lighting in the first image makes the frosting can look darker and creamier than the bottom image. The can in the bottom image looks more white than the first image because of the strong contrast with the white board. The white board in the bottom picture has a darker grey tone than the top image. 

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