How do you like your tea?
How much do we really know about the personal preferences of our friends and family?
We might ask ” How do you like your tea? (milk/sugar/strong/weak).
But do we ever ask what would you like to drink your tea in?
Mug or cup? Large or small ? China or stoneware? Patterned or plain? Colour?
This piece by Ryodi Ikeda : point of no return, a pulsating stroboscopic sound and light installation, appears to be monochrome. However images captured digitally reveal a more nuanced colour spectrum.
It is suggested that the human eye is capable of perceiving between 2 and 3 million colours, whereas birds, butterflies, fish and bees can see many more. Jennings explains that this is related to a difference in number of photoreceptors or cones. Humans with three cones are trichchromats whereas the birds and bees have four and are tetrachromats. Research on gender differences colour perception suggests that some women may also be tetrachromats. When contemplating the significant variety in our environments its intriguing to imagine what else might exist beyond our perception.
How much our descriptions of colour can convey our individual experience of colour is entirely subjective. As Josef Albers, famous for his lifelong experimentation with colour points out:”we will have different reds in our minds. Only the pigment red, the color by itself, is able to get all the different imaginations into the same direction. But the psychic reactions are still different“.
Hella Jongerius has been researching and experimenting with colour for many years. She believes that ” our world suffers from colour anorexia. My mission is to change that.” In her exhibition: Breathing Colour these ‘Colour Catchers’ demonstrate and explore the changing behaviours of colour according to light and shadow and the phenomenon of metamerism – where the appearance of colours changes according to different lighting conditions.
Arakawa and Gins challenge the value environments that are easily accessible by asserting that health and wellbeing is maintained by living in more challenging environments. They collaborated to create a variety of environments that use features including vibrant colour, obstacles and uneven floors to create barriers in the environment as a deliberate means to challenge the user. Their thesis : Reversible Destinies, asks Could Architecture Help You Live Forever? proposes that by stimulating our senses to a conscious experience, architecture can be a means to extend life indefinitely.
A number of studies suggest that there are some universally agreed human aesthetic responses to natural environments. A study by Kakehashi (et al) has found certain colour combinations in Papilionade butterflies preferred by humans. Supported by findings from the field of neuroaesthetics, that colour harmony is aesthetically pleasing to humans , and in experimental psychology “that human perception of colour combinations in nature are perceived as harmonious” Her study using human preferences of butterflies has found:
and that : “We believe that the cognitive effects of processing fluency in these colour combination rules influence human aesthetic responses.”
“one cannot explain the flower by the fertiliser ” Bachelard, G. The Poetics of Space
I know what I like