Artistic talent and super-recognition?

I’ve had my nose in books, as I do, and I’ve read that some great artists had very “vivid” visual memory, which would presumably be a different thing to creativity. Names such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Michelangelo have been cited. So this made me wonder whether I have or once had a level of artistic talent to match my excellent visual memory for faces. I’m not a visual artist. I don’t do visual art as a hobby even. I do enjoy taking photos, but nothing technical or fancy. I do enjoy creating things. I enjoy working with colour. I love going to visual arts events, as you can see from my blog. But I don’t think anyone would identify me as an artist. As a child, I think perhaps people would have. Children are encouraged to express themselves in visual art, and I obliged, as did most kids, and I also enjoyed art enough to do it in my own time at home. I did art as a year 12 subject and enjoyed it but didn’t take it hugely seriously. Perhaps being myopic but never identified as such during my school years limited my ability to draw. Perhaps my ability or interest in art is attributable to my synaesthesia, independent of my face memory ability.

Unlike so many aspects of my childhood, I remember,  in striking detail and vividness, creating art as a young child.  I remember the colours and the names of colours in a large watercolour set given to me as a young child. I remember drawing the intricate wrinkles of my own hand with the other hand at home. I remember the colours of my pencils in grade 1, and the colours of the little dyed wooden shapes we were given to learn about numbers. I remember being laughed at in grade 1 when I showed the class a painting I did at home using perspective. I remember thinking at the time that my classmates were idiots. I remember the simple joy of looking at things, even tiny things or objects of no particular importance to most people. I remember being fascinated and entranced by the structures and colours of found objects such as bird feathers and sea shells. I remember discovering that beach sand is made up of grains that can have striking and vastly different colours: dark brown, bright orange, magenta, white, transparent like glass. As a young lady I got decent marks in art in year 12 and I think my art reflected an ability or a willingness to simply draw what I saw, rather than reproducing some abstract idea of what I thought a tree or a vase should look like. My art teacher said I had ability but failed to develop it, and I think that probably sums the story of my artistic talent.

Are you a super-recogniser? Are you also an artist? Are you a super who is utterly lacking in artistic ability? What do you think? What do you know?

Am I the only one who sees…

….colours?

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/video-causes-natural-hallucinations

Colour-blindness a variation in visual perception ability possibly endowing advantages relevant to work performance, rather than simply a disability

Payne, Rob Colour-blindness may aid in search and rescue effort. Science Network. November 11th 2015.
http://www.sciencewa.net.au/topics/health-a-medicine/item/3902-colour-blindness-may-aid-in-search-and-rescue-efforts

The idea that colour-blindness can be advantagous is not new to me, as last year I watched with great interest a story on ABC24’s News Breakfast in which the colour-blind presenter Michael Rowland explained his advantage over people with normal colour vision in visually detecting camouflaged items. Unfortunately the clip of this story is no longer available to view.

Vision scientist explains colour blindness. ABC News Breakfast. 7 Apr 2014.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/vision-scientist-explains-colour-blindness/5371294

 

More interesting stuff about “the dress”

I’m a little bit relieved to find that as a person who saw the colours exactly as they are in the photo, I’m not the only person who percieved the colours of “the dress” in such a straighforward and rational way. I’m a member of the third-most common group of people, a minority (?!?) of around 10% of people. The smallest minority of respondents are classified as “other”. We can only guess what these people saw, and what they were on.

“I think it will go down as one of the most important discoveries in color vision in the last 10 years,” Conway says. “And all because of a crazy photograph.” I think it just goes to prove that there’s more new scientific discoveries out there to be made than we can guess, and those discoveries can originate from people who are not scientists and human activities that are far removed from academia and science labs. I love it.

The Dress divided the Internet, but it’s really about subtraction. RACHEL EHRENBERG

ScienceNews. MAY 14, 2015.

Striking individual differences in color perception uncovered by ‘the dress’ photograph. Rosa Lafer-Sousa, Katherine L. Hermann, Bevil R. Conway

Current Biology. Available online 14 May 2015.

The many colours of ‘the dress’. Karl R. Gegenfurtner , Marina Bloj, Matteo Toscani

Current Biology. Available online 14 May 2015.

Asymmetries in blue–yellow color perception and in the color of ‘the dress’. Alissa D. Winkler, Lothar Spillmann, John S. Werner, Michael A. Webster

Current Biology. Available online 14 May 2015.

What colour is the dress? Here’s why we disagree. Michael Slezak

New Scientist. 27 February 2015.

FFS, the dress problem isn’t psychological or perceptual

I’ve done my best to ignore the nonsense surrounding That Dress but I’ve lost patience with the abundance of stupidity that has been bought to the discussion. ISN’T IT AS OBVIOUS AS THE NOSE ON YOUR FACE? Neither the dress nor the photo of the dress are optical illusions. The dress was simply photographed under lighting conditions that gave rise to a photograph featuring colours that markedly differ from the actual colours of the dress as seen under regular lighting conditions, THEREFORE, the dress in the photo is different colours to the dress in reality. Here’s the big news; colours can be manipulated in photography! Amazing isn’t it? This manipulation can be done on a photo in computerized format using various computer applications, or the colours can be manipulated or altered before the photo is taken, by lighting of the scene to be photographed. In effect, the dress in the photo is a tint of the dress in reality. Why the confusion then? The confusion arose because the question “What colour is the dress?” requires clarification, but no one had the smarts to figure out that the question could be and was likely to be interpreted in two different ways, and thus the requirement for a clarification of the question was not identified. Some people, like myself, interpreted the question to mean “What colour is the dress in the photograph?”, and clearly it is a cold, mauvey-blue unsaturated colour and golden brown, no black, definitely no black, as anyone could see if they held an actually black item up against their computer screen while viewing the photo of the dress on their screen. Understandably, many other people interpreted the question as an invitation to guess, reason or theorize what the colour of the dress might be in reality, based on the way it appears in the photo. These people correctly and cleverly guessed or reasoned that the dress is blue and black. I do wonder about those who saw white and gold, but the question was a trick question, so I wouldn’t judge them.

There’s nothing I love more than a good optical illusion or perceptual anomaly, especially in real life situations, but I’m very sure this dress thing is not one of them. This problem appears to be one for the philosophers, not the psychologists or the scientists, but then again, I’m tempted to wonder whether there might be some measurable psychological or neurological or behavioural difference between those who naturally give an answer based on their immediate visual perception and those who naturally give an answer based on their own interpretation of their visual perceptions. I suspect that the difference might be interesting and meaningful. I’ll bet the former are less prone to most genuine visual illusions.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27048-what-colour-is-the-dress-heres-why-we-disagree.html#.VPVaTvmUd8

Postscript March 5th 2015

I’d like to add another point to this post. From what I’ve read this entire dress discussion had it’s origin in the non-scientific world of social media “guys please help me – is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the fuck out”. This young lady who does not appear to be a scientist or a psychologist discovered a very interesting perceptual anomaly phenomenon thing that has sparked huge discussion, including discussion by and among scientists, and the story has been reported in at least one international science magazine. I find it interesting that this dress meme didn’t come from the world of science. Would it have been ignored or have failed to “go viral” if a scientist had discovered The Dress? Does this say something about the sociology of this meme, or is it more the case that a non-scientist has discovered a phenomenon that is more interesting (in regard to the way it has identified puzzlingly polarized responses in large numbers of people) than anything that scientists or academics have discovered recently. Is this an example of non-scientists (not even citizen scientists) making a greater contribution to the science of colour perception than the actual scientists who are supposed to be right on top of this stuff? I know that researchers and others have identified many different types of visual illusions that are supposed to trick most or all people, but I’m not aware of a visual stimuli that polarizes viewers the way The Dress does. Am I simply ignorant? As I have written before, I believe that science is too important to leave it to the scientists.

Story on Catalyst makes many references to cross-sensory experiences in taste and smell

This is one of those pop science journalism media stories that make me think that everyone must be a synaesthete to some degree:

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4145918.htm

More strong colours and psychedelic faces – just what I like

Mural by Beastman and Vans the Omega at 140 on Wellington Street in Perth

blue and green view from the Wellington Street end of one40william in Perth

Last time I checked this new collaborative artwork by Vans the Omega from Adelaide and Beastman from Sydney was mostly obscured by construction in progress. In keeping with their established style which can be viewed in their earlier mural in a Murray Street carpark, there are plenty of faces and colours and swirly-whirly bits in this new piece. Love it.

 

 

Links:
http://www.form.net.au/2014/07/beastman-vans-the-omega-at-140/
http://visitperthcity.com/news/beastman-vans-omega-140

 

 

 

 

For people who love colour as much as I do…

http://matadornetwork.com/trips/75-places-so-colorful-its-hard-to-believe-theyre-real-pics/?utm_source=tab&utm_medium=pd&utm_content=thehuffingtonpost&utm_campaign=paidpromo

I must look, my fusiform gyrus tells me so

a section of a wall mural by Vans the Omega and Beastman in Perth

We had the pleasure of watching street art being created for the Public street art festival in Perth, Western Australia by Form last weekend. The smell of spraycan paint wasn’t so great but it was a feast for the eyes and the ears, with a boom-box blasting away in the carpark on Murray Street. While we weren’t there in time to see the piece of art partly shown in the photo below, which is I believe the creation of the Sydney artist Beastman and Adelaide-based artist Vans the Omega, I found it hard to take my eyes away from the mural. I’m a sucker for colour, I just can’t get enough of it, and nothing commands attention like saturated colours outlined in black. I suspect that the pleasure that I get from colour could be explained by the blessings of normal colour vision in the eye (cone cells in the eye normal and working) and a well-developed and well-connected fusiform gyrus, which is the area of the brain that processes faces and numbers and letters and colours and other wonderful visual experiences. This artwork certainly gave my fusiform gyrus a few things to think about, because in addition to colour perception it triggered a bit of visual recognition, because I am sure I’ve seen an image quite similar to the section photographed in some other artwork, perhaps something from the Fin de siècle? In my time I’ve looked at a lot of Symbolist and decadent art and the other art movements from the late 1800s. Of course, the other brain phenomenon triggered by this art is pareidolia, and I can see that this is an aspect of visual perception that Beastman loves to play around with, eyes and hidden faces and symmetrical designs being recurring themes in his work. On top of that my brain is also prompted to some recognition of facial expressions, because that nearly-hidden face is a grumpy one, if I’ve read it right. There’s a lot to just looking, when the art is designed to appeal to human psychology.

They’re teaching synaesthesia in the schools!

No wonder the youth of today have mixed-up minds!

This is text from a sheet explaining the correct way to write letters which was given to primary school students in Western Australian government school:

“With a straight neck and a round tummy, put his hat on, five sure looks funny.”

Actually, the number five doesn’t have a round tummy, the curve at the lower half of the number is legs. He is running so fast that his legs look like a round blurry wheel, just like in old cartoons which I used to watch on TV when I was a kid, a very long time ago. When people think about letters of the alphabet as though they are people, that is called ordinal-linguistic personification and it is thought to be a variety of synaesthesia. A lot of folks must have it I think.

I’ve also seen a classroom activity in which the students have been asked to sort and paste pieces of coloured paper into the two categories of “warm” and “cool” colours, a cross sensory activity for sure, bordering on synaesthesia. At this rate, we will have a 100% prevalence of synaesthesia in the upcoming generations.