reading attached
Part 1
The rainbow is a universally observable and consistent natural phenomenon, and yet its representations, both verbal and visual, are strikingly inconsistant across cultures around the globe. You have already read what David Batchelor says about this, now what are your thoughts and experiences with this fact.
part 2 replys
1- This was the first chapter this whole term in which I felt I could understand and grasp some of the concepts without too much difficulty. One thing I learned is that they believe some natural, intense colors are out of the limits of language. That they can’t properly be described or talked about.
“Everything seen by those who visit the minds antipodes is brilliantly illuminated and seems to shine from within. All colors are intensified to a pitch far beyond anything seen in the normal state, and at the same time the minds capacity for recognizing fine distinctions of tone and hue is notably heightened.
John Gage refers briefly to “the feeling that verbal language is incapable of defining the experience of color.”
Those are couple of passages from the chapter that I felt explained why we might see cultural differences when describing and creating replicas of rainbows. Also we learned in a previous week that different cultures have different amounts of colors in their language, which I believe would have a significant impact on how rainbows are described among cultures.
2- I personally think this chapter was extremely eye-opening, I’ve never thought that much about color being something that can change cross culturally. The last few pages of the chapter were especially interesting because I had never noticed the different ways rainbows change across various things; the author had mentioned TV’s and different logos as just a few examples.
I tried to do my own research about different visual and verbal associations rainbows have, and I was actually pretty shocked at what I found. In any given category (such as art, religion or literature to name a few) rainbows can mean entirely different things. The Greeks and the Romans associated it with a passageway between Heaven and Earth. Tibetan Buddhists believe rainbows are a state of being that one can achieve. Amazonian cultures believe that rainbows are a negative symbol, and bring pain.
However, in my own life, I’ve only ever thought of rainbows as a symbol of good luck and nothing more. In contrast, a good friend of mine said she thought of rainbows as a symbol of forgiveness from God. It was very eye opening learning about the different ways other cultures and people perceive rainbows and how their views are completely different from my own.
3- I do agree that color is the primary source in which we can determine an object. For example, if we were to have two squares of no colors, and put them together, we would have two squarse. However, if we were to colour the squares, then we would get “red square” or “yellow square” to determine and to differentiate the two objects. Even with different factors of size, it would still be a square, and the biggest way to determine the difference would still be through color. Our reliance on sight makes a whole world difference rather than using sound. Most of the time, we have to be able to see in order to be able to dodge the inanimate objects. Since these objects are harder, we aren’t able to see the surfaces, or even see the color.
However, with the last statement where David Batchelor says that colors stay the same even when objects are removed, I completely agree with this statement. While color could essentially change what a substance or object looks like if it were to be removed, it is still safe to say that the color holds a huge impact of the way that we can see objects and items that we hold. Color diversifies the many objects and thus holds a primary role in the way that we as humans are able to diversify the many things throughout this world. These things all include how we perceive our society in a way as well because of the way that we use color with specific rankings and currency etc.
4- I feel like yes, in a way colour is limited by language, however, the perception of colour is not always limited by language.
I’m thinking about those monkeys talked about in the radio lab podcast. Now monkeys don’t have language, but after they underwent the process of gaining the ability to see a new colour (though it took time) they were able to actually perceive the colour. That colour may have had no linguistic meaning, but it did have perceptual meaning to the monkies.
The same goes for the woman who was thought to have the ability to use her extra colour cones. The language was a limiter on her ability to translate her perception of the colour to people who could not see it, however, her individual perception remained the same.
I think that despite if we don’t have a word for a certain shade of green (or any colour) that doesn’t mean it cannot be perceived. And we can see by the monkey and the woman that it does register in our perception of colour; it is just not registerable into others perceptions. Colour and the way we perceive it may be even more personal than we may ever know; we can really begin to understand 100% how someone perceives colours unless we look at the world through their eyes. Who’s to say that the colour I personally perceive as orange is actually blue but I just call it orange because that’s what everyone calls it. Maybe that’s why some people despise certain colours but other people absolutely love the exact same colour. I don’t think in a sense of colour we are ever seeing eye to eye, both metaphorically and perhaps even literally.
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