What Would It Mean to See a New Color?
5 hours ago
- Ren Ng, a Berkeley professor, hypothesized that stimulating only M cone cells could produce a color never seen before.
- Using Austin Roorda's lab technology to map and stimulate individual cone cells, the experiment generated 'olo' – a supersaturated green/teal.
- Olo cannot be reproduced by printers, cameras, or pigments; it exists only as a perceptual experience from unnatural cone stimulation.
- The article explores the complexity of color perception, including trichromacy, tetrachromacy, and color blindness.
- Tetrachromatic women, like subject cDa29, possess four cone types and can detect subtle color differences invisible to most people.
- The dress color controversy illustrates how the brain interprets lighting conditions to achieve color constancy.
- Artists and pigment experts view color as both a physical material (pigments like YInMn blue) and a perceptual phenomenon.