Optical Illusions
Summary
Nearly every living system has evolved the ability to detect light in one way or another, so for us, seeing color is one of the simplest things the brain does. And yet, even at this most fundamental level, context is everything.
Why is context everything? It is answering that question that tells us not only why we see what we do, but who we are as individuals and who we are as a society.
Color enables us to see the similarities and differences between surfaces according to the full spectrum of light that they reflect. We have no direct access to our physical world other than through our senses, and the light that falls onto our eyes is determined by multiple things in the world, not only the color of objects, but the color of their illumination and the color of the space between us and those objects. Vary any one of those parameters, and you change the color of the light that falls onto your eye. This means that the same image can have an infinite number of real world sources.
Related Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrAwr-ReuVA
Keywords: Beau Lotto, TEDTalks, TED, Lottolab , illusion, color vision, perception, brain, mind, honey bee, art, light, sight
