sandell@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Greg Sandell) (04/04/91)
> o I don't know what all this proves, but I've been convinced ever > since that color perception is based on visual environment. Note > that this is different from the "take off your orange sunglasses > and the world looks blue" phenomenon -- there was no adjustment > period. A number of people have been referring to this phenomenon. I have been reading about this sort of stuff recently in books on Color in Art. They treat the subject with alot more precision. Here are some extracts from THE ELEMENTS OF COLOR by Johannes Itten. He taught at Bauhaus along with Klee and Kandinsky. "If we gaze for some time at a green square and then close our eyes, we see, as an afterimage, a red square. ... The eye posits the complementary color; it seeks to restore equilibrium of itself." (p. 19) In discussing the "Principle of Simultaneous Contrast," he writes: "...we insert a gray square in an area of pure color of the same brilliance. On yellow the gray will look gray-violet; on orange, bluish gray... Each color causes the gray to seem tinged with its complementary. Pure chromatic colors also have the tendency to shift each other towards their complements." (p. 19) Greg Sandell p.s. Sorry for being a party to shifting the discussion away from music! -- Greg Sandell sandell@ils.nwu.edu