A and B are the same color. No joke. Pull that image into Photoshop — both squares are 100% #787878. How wild is that? The image above is actually from the “astronomy picture of the day” and is being used to illustrate an example of the color illusions that scientists run into when observing the sky. While space is cool and all, it’s also an interesting thing to consider when working with color in a design. Sometimes that whole relativity thing is crazy.
Camelot, ’tis a silly place. Normally color illusions like this are really lame, but this little experiment does a great job of hinting at the possibilities of such an illusion — as a designer, how much information is needed to tell the story? How much can be filled in by the user? Who’s the artist in this case? There has to be someone who can explain this better…
…a bit better. OK so the lecture itself is a bit rambling at times but that first part that builds on the simple color illusion in the castle experiment above is quite interesting. Olafur Eliasson @ 1:30:
“What the potential is is to kind of move the border of who’s the author and who’s the receiver? Who’s the consumer and who has the responsibility for what one sees? I think there is a socializing dimension in moving that border. Who decides what reality is?”
The rest of the lecture is definitely worth a listen or two or three… He rambles a bit, but his thoughts on art are quite germane.
Etc. If you just can’t get enough of illusions, more here and here. You should probably also pull out your old Magic Eyes and relive third grade (an explanation of how those actually work here).
