Postmodernism Readings

I hate to critique a piece of writing without finding something I enjoyed about it, but frankly I didn't enjoy much about either the Postmodernism Introduction or Jean Baudrillard's piece on Disneyland. From what I gathered in these two readings, Postmodernism is merely satirical art hellbent on pointing out the flaws of modern culture and interests. I don't understand the author's brief implication that the merging of cultures in our society today was positive only to go on and denounce it as the fragmentation of culture. This makes it sound like less of a blending of cultures and more like cultures are being broken and diluted. The Disneyland reading was no more redeeming with its belief that Disneyland's fake world only exists to make our fake world seem more real. Sure, Los Angeles in particular can be a little vapid because it's an entertainment hub, but that doesn't make the people and their lives and experiences any less real. I just don't really understand what Postmodernism is attempting to accomplish based on these two readings

Colors Podcast

I found it really fascinating how the musicians determined the musical tone of a color. I never really imagined red as a deep note, it always seemed brighter and therefore higher than blue or purple. So for the highest musical notes to be blue and purple seemed pretty strange to me.

The idea that we don't all see the same colors is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Throw in the variation in color processing across species and that's almost overwhelming. I never realized that dogs could see blue and green tones and I can't even fathom what 16 color rods would allow a mantis shrimp to see. Even more bewildering to me is the fact that researchers have been able to add color cones to monkeys through a virus. Should the FDA ever approve of human testing, that procedure would be ground-breaking for those suffering with color-blindness.

Additionally, I had no idea that women were capable of being tetrachromats. It's difficult to imagine the actual reality of that, especially when the test performed on the woman with tetrachromacy was also successfully completed by a man who happened to have an eye for color.

While the story behind the Cambodian pigment Gamboge is tragic and leads to questions about the morality behind possessing a color that has such bloody origins, I loved learning about how pigments are naturally occurring. Although pigments are naturally occurring, some are extraordinarily rare. This brings us to the issue of Homer's depiction of the sea being wine colored. Despite the belief that he was color blind, his bizarre depictions of colors had to do with the fact that blue is the rarest naturally occurring pigment and therefore many cultures, the Greeks included, simply didn't have a name for it. Because they didn't have a name for it, blue wasn't perceived as often as other identifiable colors even when it was present.

Whitescape

The first picture shown was taken in the art room with bright, cool toned lights. I selected a white cotton round and a white ping pong ball for my comparison. When placed next to each other in this setting, the white cotton round appeared much lighter and had an essence of blue in its tone. The white ping pong ball hardly looked white at all in comparison, and it seemed to possess grayish, lavender tones.

The second picture was taken in a hallway with much dimmer, warmer toned lighting. In this lighting, the contrast between the two objects is even more intense. The white cotton round looks dingy and appears to now have yellow undertones, but I feel that it's still identifiable as white. On the other hand, it would be very difficult to identify the ping pong ball as white next to the cotton round when placed in this lighting. It's hard to see in this picture, but in person the ping pong ball took on a sort of greenish tan hue.

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