I am thinking, that the synesthesia is one of the resources of symbolic culture: this, I understand as a ritual/habitual substitution of one object by another one. And I am looking for an answer, if there is any coincidence in the responds of our imaginations; what would be a simple way to proof the origin of archetypes (the Jung´s conception) in our culture. I think now about the western one, which is well designed by Aristotle.
I supposed that humanities and neuroscience are clouse to find the common place.
A square has no color, it is a building block which supports a WHOLE. It takes on a color, only when it's role is defined within the overall structure of it enviornment!
Creo, honestamente que las esquinas pueden ser diferentes, en cuanto a color, del resto del cuadrado, acaso no han visto colores degradados en figuras geometricas? pensar lineal esta bien ,pero es solo una parte de la percepción de esto que solemos llamar realidad. Bien por ti Patricia Nuñez
Why english, why not in spanish, if Youtube write in english, i'll try to understand you, can you understand me? Just try
Thank you for your participation: the connection between colors and forms is not reasonable: of couse I agree that the square is a form, anyway, everything you imagine or you see need to be in color, other way is invisible. It is even if the color of the things is make by our brains: so there is no color out of our minds.
Second subject:
For some of us it is not a problem what language we use here, but because the page is in English, so we are like in the English lenguage territory: let's write English. it is a good exercise.
The first thing that came to my mind is .. RED
I would be curious to know in what color Daniel Tammet sees a square; an autistic scientist that sees mathematics as forms and colors.
France, thank you, I will inform you the statistic of answeres on this question.
Nicolas, I suppose that you will imagine one square; if oit is present in front of your inner eye it will have one color, in other way it will be invisible to you. And as is obvieus, there is no color in the world outside of our minds and it produce sone questions. I the first level, what is the function of the color in our thinking, next, where it is produce in our brains. I suppose that there is connection with the synesthesia: do you know the quesition about Buba and Kiki?
I would imagine the answer would, in every case, be subjective and exclusive to the individual. And if I understand you clearly, you are looking to see if there is any repetitive answer among us that would give indication that there may be a cultural archetypical indication. I think that would take a very different atmosphere for proper analysis as once the suggestion is given, it is influenced by reading other feedback. And then there are differences that matter from one human to the next, such as mode of imagination. Many people can sense things in black and white, some can see color, some can also sense smell and some even can imagine touch. Like an ice cream cone, some can see it in the mind, some can imagine it as being cold or tasting vanilla, some can smell the scent of it and some can imagine the wetness of the melting ice cream. All depends on the individual. As well, we are all influenced by current marketing visuals that are passed around so frequently, like a square that is often seen on a website or some other common place that many people see on a daily basis.
After all that, I see a grey metallic cube instead of a square...
It's blue!
I wonder if that's influenced by the automatic colours in ppt?
Happy New Year to everybody!
Patricia, I agree what you said: a real investigation I realize with peolpe who doesn´t know what it is about. And sure, Sarah, there are the influences of marketing or memories, or - Frances - family predisposition. In spite of all these, I find the constance very visible one: the squere is mostly red or blue, never yellow or greeen. Why? I suppose the same reason that one mandala is red and blue (or mix of both).
I think, it's rather boring, besides it has sharp angles. " From my childhood I haven't loved an oval. I have been painting an angle"Kogan P, Russian poet.I can understand a black square, but it's very expressive for it. Only dull, greyish!
Kristi, you are right, it is never green: watch india´s traditional mandalas: they are never green: and a square or circle are mandalas. Its center is purple or violet, or red. There is blue sometimes, if we don.t forget it, because it is a symbol of the occult.
My students answered white, one of them -blue, and one of them thinks, that it's checked.
The knowledge is a fuzzy object. Anyway we can belive in something, in the focus clue. Ergo: if you are sure about something it is your feith, if you dubting, or asking, that is the revelation of the reason. And once more, seriously: the knowledge is a fuzzy object.
I appreciate those who said red, which is my favorite color, but my image was one of white or even clear. I wonder if the way we see a square affects the color. The question brought to mind an empty square, a container waiting to be filled with something, including color. Perhaps it is because of my tendency to pay close attention to metaphors that affected the image of white or clear. Great question; hope you can collate the results and share at some point.
A square is blue, Yves Klein blue, but if it is in a dinamic position, a losangle it becomes yellow. A triangle is also yellow and a rectangle is red. A circle is grey.
I'm a painter, I never thought about or before and made an automatic answer, and I do not know why. Mondrian maybe...
Ana Leonor
Red, I think. But maybe blue. As soon as I started thinking about color rather than square, I lost my initial concept and thought about variations of color instead.
I draw a lot of squares and in my mind they can be any colour. ...Although recently Squares have been blue, yellow, green, red and purple, in that order. While synesthesia is a documented neurologically based condition, surely for most people the colour of a square depends on a variety of factors. In part their experience of coloured squares, but more so their experience of colour in general. Surely this also is subject to change with experience.
And a blind person. How this person imagine a square, or maybe feel a square?, what could be the arquetype of a persons who can not see?
Carolina, you are right: all the time I am thinking about the perception of the world of the persons who can´t share the experience of the symbols, which are basically visual. I continue one research about that theme; till I have no access to these persons who perception is different because of blindness or other conditions (mental illness). We yet know that any color is made by mind of each human or animal, so we do not inhabit exactly the same world with our pets, or even persons: my sister doesn’t differ blue and green, like plenty of people can´t differ green and brown, and I start to salivate abundantly when I see yellow, and so on. So, the similitude of the answers for the totally absurd questions, what color is a square?, or, what color is the water? indicate deeper interdependence of humans then the personal impressions: it is my hypothesis. And I suppose that the archetypes which determinate the symbols based the human communication and the human culture.
Dear Friends,
today I will inform you about basic data I have got from my little research about the color of the square. In line: square is blue: 13 cases; red: 10; others colors (seven: magenta, green, gray, white, yellow, black, violet): 10 cases, a part of the rational voices that the square has no color, but there are not too much of them because the reason is not the proper tool here. In the enquiry made with prints, (which contain 13 questions, and gave much more information), I have got answers from 130 persons, and here are part of the information: the square looks like blue for 37 persons, red, also, 37 and is important: the same time circle looks like blue 40 times and red 57: the coincidence of the blue/red color of the square and the circle we find 47 times. Any other color of square or circle shows up less than 10 times.
So, isn´t it true, that the square has a color? And the reason has no reason here. We can see the archetypes in action here: perhaps. Later I will published one short article about it.
.
I always equated the connections to ski slope colors. Blue square, Green circle, Black diamond. But that is a first response. I like to think of those subjective things actually having presence and the ability to draw from the viewer a response to THEIR question. I don't mean this literally of course. I know that colors and shapes are not sentient. I simply suggest this as one approach to understanding art. It is possibly a reason color and spirituality have had such close ties. One other thing;One of the most significant first activities humans did was to put colors on a cave walll to indicate buffalo or deer right? Why was't that buffulo always the color of the actual? What was it that caused the first divergence from mimicry?
Neil, I think that color was applied in the first place on our own bodies, lived of dead, dressed them with one strange thing: the significance.
You are probably right I didn't think about that. The significance probably had to do with fear of death and sex most likely as well. This is all highly hypothetical but interesting to think about nonetheless. Colors don't have singular meanings, which makes them elusive. It is interesting to think about the color of a bird, like a square. THE bird. The problem is that there are many kinds of birds so the color of THE bird is irrelevant. Finding the statistical data for what people percieve is their own bird or square is well.... I don't know. I guess there could be a pattern there but it seems unlikely? This is an artist talking so I do get the fun factor. You also might look at some of the work Komar and Melamid did on using statistics in art making. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komar_and_Melamid Specifically the series called 'People's Choice' from like 1994 to 1996.
Neil, I have red Arthur Danto´s "After the end of art", there is describe the research of Melmid and Komar about what people define as the best art object: was the picture, mostly blue, with green and water, the sun, trees, animals perhaps. I took these case as the point of beginning of my own research about the role of the symbols, so archetypes.
We use plenty of patterns and others sources of knowledge; less of all is our own experience: you know, that when occurs one car accident, if there are few eyewitness, each one in differ way define the participating cars: for one eyewitness were blue and red, for other were white and so on; the color is the first information people considerate, and they are something like sure about it.
I think in a square...
and i can see it white, full white, pure white, maybe i'll impressed by Leonardo Da Vincy with him Vitrubius Man, i don't know, but i can see perfectly an square pure and totally white. i can not see any color at the border, it's only as a high key picture. Withe over white, and one of them, the withe inner square is more brighter than the withe from outside.
I just bought Danto's book.and I feel I should have been familiar with it by now but wasn't... Thanks! So I personally, actively employ the two former stages of art, that of mimetic approaches and of manifestos (artist philosophy). However, I still break with pop art (what I call accessible art) on most things and so it will be interesting to read how he feels the next stage is art criticism itself. Many artists have gotten totally disillusioned from having art be so inclusive and accessible, not even knowing what it is at times.... Pop on one side, Dada on another. These are probably good challenges for Art to work through but not easy ones. I still think Pop Art and Fine Art are mutually exclusive but if science can get in pop art's face with a little statistical analysis and bring a little bit of empiricism to the freeforall we have now.... awesome.
The answers I analyzed, I saw that the red square and even more, red circle, is the privileged figure. The red color is the color, the second place takes blue. The numbers of these data are really significant.
Blue Square, at first the border then it's fill... like water in the toilet
How to explain that most of us agree that the square is red or blue? Have you any suggestions?
For me a square is red because of Malevich's painting "Red Square." Were it not for the painting, it might well be red because of my childhood fascination with Moscow's Red Square, so wonderfully "other" and named after what was my favorite color, no less.
Danto's book has been on my reading list; thanks for the reminder.
Sandi, there is other Malevich´s painting, "black square", and other one "white square". And if you read the voices here, you can appreciate the different reasons we pick up to understand our conviction about the color of the square, but they are no more than fragile justifications. But we are sure that the square is red or blue, or other. Why?
Jolanta,
Last night I asked a class to briefly write a description of the color of a square in their imaginations and why. Here are the results:
4 red, blue, or white
2 multi-colored
1 black, orange, or green
A few refused to participate, convinced it was a trick question, an interesting response in itself since I haven't tricked them with anything this semester. Their justifications ranged from having learned their shapes with blocks of that color to chosing favorite colors to mood. One said he chose white because it was the best color for a concept rather than an object. That's probably closer to my own thinking than a red square really.
I look forward to seeing where your research leads you!
Sandi Landis, Francis Cragg, Irina Pechonkina, all of you who asked your family or students, you let mi appreciate the constancies, and more, the objectivity of this research. You can see, that there are privilege of the red color, then blue, and it doesn’t depend who is asking and in what language or what the medium of recollecting data. Earlier here I report some preliminaries results. I appreciate these contributions very much and I invite you to extend this simple research, but what will help us to understand how our perception works.
I want to ask you if I can quote the results which you obtained. May I give your name in the paper which I am writing just now? I am informing about one part of the results of the questionnaire I used, but in the Introduction I would like to report about the results obtained -- thanks to all of my colleagues here-- in the ReseachGate. Thanks to the ResearchGate moderators and the institution itself.
Congratulations with the International Women"s Day! Good luck to you, Jolanta.
Neil, I made 13 questions to 130 people. Now I analyze only the answers for four questions: about the color of circle compared with color of number 0, and color of square compared with the number 4. I pick these two pairs because the first pair --0 and circle-- has the formal similarity but not of significance; and the second pair --4 and square-- has, both, the formal similarity and of the significance. It is because my question was: are the archetypes forms or are significances?
I received 130 answers, most of them indicate the red color, and between them the red circle: 57 answers, then the blue circle: 39, then square; each color, red and blue 37 answers. Later, number 0, was seen like white in 50 answers, and like black on 38. Then, we have green, comparable frequent en two figures: 4 and the same time square: respectively 29 and 24. Later, much more lately, all other colors, plenty of them --more them 20-- with low frequency of answers.
Irina, thank you, and to you the best wishes. And, to all of you my colleagues here. Kisses!
Formal significance being defined as the way in which something is "assimilated" into language more heavily than it's significance? I am speaking from the Lacanian model of language formation here as my orientation to this discussion. To clarify I am coming from this as when a letter or number is essentially forgotten "in use" to a greater extent that its significance. Math or grammar being the formal as opposed to everyday associations which might be significance. i.e. that significance is a more variable trait than an archetype's formal aspects. What is color then a significance or a form? I think colors themselves are thought to be formal aspects but they have huge significance which vary among individuals. Not only that but they are variable within individuals (this is a question I am personally working with). Color choice could be as simple as the frequency a color appears in the room which they are tested or the color they chose to wear that day. Do you view color as a form or significance? Or is this a question you are addressing as well? This is interesting stuff. Thanks for posting your thoughts.
Brown, terra colors. Triangle green and circle blue; but I "see in my mind" colors for the days, months...
Maybe because of the way the question was formulated, I saw a black line growing in the shape of a square. I think I didn´t want that the square had any color. But when it was completed, the interior was white and the border was black.
Red it is indeed!
Setting aside cultural and subjective projection, it all comes down to point and lines in space... Kandinsky mapped it very well in objective, physiological terms. Synesthesia more recent research confirm & reinforce what was suspected all along....
More interesting - in the physical world: what is the color of an atom?
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