Colour and Vision

Fascinating exhibition at the Natural History Museum which addressed lots of questions about vision. How did it evolve? Do animals see as we do? Without an eye to see it does colour exist? What is the benefit of colour?

In my rare philosophical moments I sometimes wonder if we all see colour in the same way or whether we just think we do because we give it words based on comparisons, but this show left me lots more musings! I loved the idea that at the dawn of life the world was monochrome as organisms didn’t have eyes so there was no point in colour. The first vision was just telling light from dark but as eyes evolved behaviour changed to complement this. If your predator could now see you, you had to move more or develop a trick to put them off eating you!

I loved the section on seeing colour. Humans just see three colours but our brain integrates these and merges them using memory. Primitive creatures see and receive more colours but only because their brains can’t then merge them. There was a great AV of what one scene looks like to different animals and insects.

Another section looked at how creatures use colour as disguise and warning. It looked at how some colour and effect is created by structure rather than pigment. How light lands on a surface can create and change colour. This section was a bit full of stuffed things. I felt rather sorry for the half stuffed tiger with a fully formed head and front paws but a floppy back end!

The last section looked at how people have invented a relationship with colour. We are plain creatures but use colour to express ourselves. It talked about colour associations vary between people and there was a board with emotions written on it which invited you to hang the blocks of colour which you associate with each emotion on it. It would be fascinating to see how it changed over a day.

It ended with a fascinating video about a colour blind artist who has developed a way of turning colours into sound to give him an idea of the differences between them and give him a sense of how people respond emotionally to colour.

Closes on 6 November 2016.

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