Smells and Bells

A truly overwhelming sensory experience? Holi. This celebration of color and the coming of spring was truly an experience for all the senses. The colors were visually intense obviously, and the powder flying through the air was a sight to see. The powder would get in your mouth, leaving a foul taste, and the smell was very distinctive as well. People were throwing cold water at each other, and someone dumped a bucket over my head, instantly pulling my attention towards the feeling of the ice cold water running down my back. You could hear everyone yelling and laughing as they chucked this multi colored powder at each other, until it all had been used up, and everyone was a mess of different colors. Some people had been so covered in the powder that the colors all molded together to a brown, while others had bright splashes of pink and purple where they had clearly been hit with the color. Then, some people swam in the pond, although I did not partake in that. Even though my hair...

I saw this commercial recently. It actually isn't really a commercial, but more of an unexpected emotional experience. When we have talked about sight in class, I have only thought of blindness as being the opposite of sight. But in fact, colorblindness could be another opposite, and perhaps even a worse opposite. Imagine you can see, but you cannot see color. You know when other people look at the trees or grass they see green, but you see grey. Imagine how frustrating and internally upsetting that must be- you can see exactly what they are seeing, but cannot see the color! Personally, after seeing this commercial, I have come to understand I take color for granted. We all do- it has always been there for us. Although color is a personal experience, we all have a general understanding of what green is, or yellow, or blue, and we all have a favorite color. We do not truly understand how much color plays into our world and how we act and move about this life. Color shapes our wor...

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending WheaTalks, Wheaton's version of the famous TED Talks. I must admit, I expected to be bored out of my mind during the two and a half hours that followed (I went to support a friend who was giving one of these talks), but I ended up thoroughly enjoying myself. The topics were fascinating and I was so impressed by our peer's intellect, but the last talk, Professor Morris's talk, made me think of this class immediately. Professor Morris discussed how we, as humans, are becoming increasingly dependent on technology, and, in 2035, if technology continues to develop at the rate that is has, computers will be more powerful than all human minds combined. In fact, we are merging with our technology, sometimes in dramatic ways. Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind. He sees the world in grey, but, with the help of technology, he has expanded his perception of the world so he can recognize colors. He had a camera surgically fixed...

Diane Ackerman discusses the trees changing color and why we see this as a part of her analysis of vision in The Natural History of the Senses , and this section of the book really captured my interest, as I have always found color to be extremely intriguing. I had a childhood friend who was red green colorblind, and I could not wrap my head around his inability to distinguish between these two colors that seemed so different to me. In my mind, if I could see them, how could he not? Since then, I have realized that in fact our individual perceptions of the world can differ wildly, but as a child, it seemed so unlikely that my friend and I could see the world so differently. In class on Tuesday, we discussed color and the mechanism of how we see it. Essentially, we see whatever color an object is not, whichever color is reflected back instead of absorbed. We also briefly touched on the association between colors and emotions, which prompted me to think on this further. For example, ...