Color

My original idea for a Ning site was about how we would "see" a new color - What does it look like, how would we expect it to taste, would seeing it make us feel happy, or sad, etc. etc. Through my Ning site, the idea transformed a little bit when it became evident that the colors we see now are highly subjective.

Basically, we've got enough trouble as is with the colors we've got now.



Color is Subjective

Someone commented on my blog who is red-green colorblind :
http://acolorfullworld.ning.com/profiles/blogs/color-blindness

" The thing of it is, what I do see when looking at these colors is not a perfectly neutral gray or, as some people have thought, the object of color is completely invisible to me, but rather a different version of what everyone else sees."

Right from the start, not everyone is looking at the same colors.

I really liked how he wrapped up his comment :

"[Color] is rather subjective and is a surprisingly loose "structure" of definition to describe things that we, especially as visual people, put a lot of trust and confidence in."



-How can we trust that people see things the same?
-If people see things differently, how can we know that everyone sees our work the same?
-Is color a futile endeavour if no two people see it the same?
-What happens when we can't trust the colors we see in front of us? How do I know that what I'm looking at is what someone else saw when they made it?




We've been trying to quantify color for a long time.

In a world of subjective color, Crayola feels that it can successfully color our world with only 120 different crayons.

-The whole world, in 120 colors from Almond to Yellow-Orange.
http://www.crayola.com/colorcensus/history/current_120_colors.cfm
-How do you try and describe "Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown" or "Razmatazz" as a color? If there's only 120 of them, you'd better be carefull how you name them!


There's a real science behind the meanings of some colors
(From my Ning site - someone sent this to me)
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html

-Some colors do have certain reactions within our brains.
-"While blue is one of the most popular colors it is one of the least appetizing. Blue food is rare in nature. Food researchers say that when humans searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black, or purple. When food dyed blue is served to study subjects, they lose appetite." (From above link)

-"The most romantic color, pink, is more tranquilizing. Sports teams sometimes paint the locker rooms used by opposing teams bright pink so their opponents will lose energy."

Grading Notes

Work for grading DUE FRIDAY MAY 28TH

-New Media Artist Research
-New Media Artist Presentation
-E-Portfolio
-Generative Topic Teamwork
-Generative Topic / Individual Work
-Social Network Research
-Final Presentation
-Professionalism
-Attendance

More interesting Stuff

Watch the first two videos. The other links are so-so.



Check out this video of a mischievous Octopus.
I watched the beginning, and I was like "eh, another blurry underwater video", but the middle is really cool and serene, and the ending was like "WOAH" when things suddenly became brilliantly sharp and vibrantly colored. I think the music fits it pretty well too.

http://www.vimeo.com/10966874


This is an ad. . .And I can't believe I forgot about it while we were doing our presentations!
I think this best illustrates why you don't always want to re-touch photos too much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcbZ0v8Mpvk








A Good use for the new Apple iPad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9NP-AeKX40



A few links which I'll try and forward to the right people in our class who might find them interesting :


Both of these actually seem really important as we talk about social networking, and how much information about ourselves is floating around online - whether we know about it and want it out there or not.


"Google Street View Shoots Same Woman 43 Times"

The van with the camera that captures images for Google Street View was driving around at the same time (and about the same pace) as an English woman taking her dog out for a walk. Her husband found her on Google Street View 43 separate times.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20002799-71.html



Google and Library of Congress to Archive All Public Tweets

I'm not much of a Twitter fan. I think I want more then just 140 characters to say what it is I have to say, and its nice to add in pictures and links now and then. I'm tempted to move to Plurk, which is like twitter, Facebook, and instant messaging combined; You can post things, and your friends can comment on them, right on your page - So you can post a photo, and then watch/read your friends comments on it like a conversation.

I think that its an interesting idea to archive the public tweets, since there is a LOT of information conveyed by them - like when Obama was elected, I bet there were millions of people tweeting about his victory. A quote from within the article states

""Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I'm no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data," wrote a Library of Congress representative in a Facebook note."


What I'd like to know is how exactly they will be archived - For instance, If I have a tweet that I suddenly decide I don't want to be public, and I change the privacy settings on it, what happens? Does it get deleted from the archive? (I don't even know if you can set privacy setting for individual tweets, so it might be a moot point.)

http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/14/technology/Google_Twitter_archive/

Ning

The more I use Ning, the less I'm liking it.

Here's the link to my Ning network

http://acolorfullworld.ning.com/


I like the idea behind Ning, but I think Blogger is just as powerful (for the most part), and its much more user friendly. I think Blogger also has more powerful built-in tools, but I'll see how Ning does.