Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see

The brilliant Phil Plait, an astronomer who writes the blog Bad Astronomy, posted this yesterday and I am amazed.

You can see embedded spirals in this image in green, pink-orange and blue. Well, wonder of wonders, the green and the blue are actually the same color. Phil popped the original image into Photoshop and isolated the "two" colors to be sure. Here they are side by side.

Sure enough, they are both RGB 0, 255, 150.

Human brains are amazing machines, but cameras they are not. I deal with identifying colors for a living and I'm pretty aware of the tricks my brain can play when I'm trying to judge what color a specific color is. I always look at colors in isolation when I can and have been known to mask off whole sections of carpet patterns so that I can really see the color I'm looking at. I warn people all the time about looking at paint chips in a fan deck --don't do it! Your brain can't judge with any degree of accuracy a color that's displayed in a line up of similarly hued and tinted colors.

So let's look at what's going on with this fantastic optical illusion.

These look like different colors because this illustration is shortchanging our brains' ability to contextualize these "blue" and "green" colors. As you can see in the close up, the magenta and orange stripes aren't continuous. The orange stripes don't go through the "blue" spiral and the magenta stripes don't go through the "green" one.

Without any conscious awareness of it, our brains are forced to see the "green" stripe in contrast with the orange stripe and the color reads as green. Similarly, the same "green" color, when we're forced to compare it to magenta reads as blue. To prove this, concentrate on the spot where the "blue" stripe butts into the orange stripe on the right side of the image. If you stare at it long enough it will read as the same green as the stripes on the left side of the image. But only at the point where the two colors intersect. It's wild! If I stare at that intersecting point, my brain will let me see the green but only at the intersecting point. If I widen my focus slightly, it still looks blue in the center of the stripe.

Human brains are amazing things but they cheat and play fill in the blanks all the time. As a designer, I think I'm pretty aware of this and I'm pretty adept at forcing perspective and hiding flaws. Usually, I'm pretty good at seeing though these kinds of optical illusions. I have to say though, that this one surprised me. I love this kind of stuff!

I feel like an A-Ha video

Here I am in Paul’s blog. I feel kind of like the A-Ha video from the ‘80s, where the girl suddenly finds herself in the middle of a comic book…

Please don’t throw me into the trash can when it’s over, Paul!! ;-)

Next week while Paul is slacking off in the Bahamas — I mean working hard reef diving and eating rice & peas — a few of us are going to help him keep his post-a-day record intact by guest blogging for him. I thought I’d take a shot at writing a quick post today before the real pressure is on, to make sure everything is working OK.

So… I’m going to take this opportunity to give you a little sneak preview of the giveaway my blog partner Victoria and I are announcing this Friday on our blog, DesignTies. Yes, that’s a shameless plug :-D What can I say, I have no shame ;-) We’re giving away something that was created especially for us by a talented artist in North Carolina. I won’t hold the fact that she’s a Tar Heels fan against her. Even though North Carolina won the 2009 NCAA title and Duke choked as usual and didn’t even make it to the Sweet Sixteen… but really, I’m not bitter… ;-)

But I digress… here are a few hints for you — can you guess what we’re giving away??

1. It’s purple.

2. It’s glamourous.

3. It’s smaller than a breadbox. That’s my subtle tie-in to the KITCHEN part of Paul’s blog name :-)

OK, to be honest, you’ll never guess what it is based on these hints. So you’ll just have to come check out our blog on Friday and see what it is!! :-)

Now I have to think of something clever and interesting to write about for my post next week. Paul is a hard act to follow!! But I’ll do my best to entertain you, inform you, and hopefully not offend you :-)

Kelly

P.S. Hey Paul, did you notice I typed ~ ’80s ~ properly?? :-)

Purple flower from Flickr

Marilyn picture from VIPortraits

Eva Solo Bread Box from Living Comforts

Mosaic Art Now

I've been growing more interested in mosaics as an art form over the last couple of months and I've been meeting some really great people who live their lives in the world of the mosaic. I'm captivated by this idea of mosaic as art. In the hands of a genius, the seeming restrictions of geometry and the medium itself are transformed into assets to be reveled in and the resulting work offers a perspective not available by any other means.

There's an organization out there called Mosaic Art Now, and it was through their blog that I first became aware of them. I'll write more about the great folks at Mosaic Art Now later this week, but in the meantime, one of their posts from earlier this month really got me excited and I want to pass along some of my excitement.

This stunning work is in a subway station in the Bronx, the Bedford Park Boulevard Station to be precise. I'll say one thing about the MTA, they are serious about bringing real art to the subway riders of the great city of New York. As evidenced by this work, Community Garden, they're committed to the outer boroughs as much as they are to Manhattan.

Artist Andrea Dezsö was commissioned by the MTA to create this mosaic, and it was interpreted and installed by master mosaicist Stephen Miotto. Andrea Dezsö is a visual artist and writer. She was born and raised Romania and is ethnically Hungarian. She brings a whole new definition to the term multi-media artist. Dezsö makes drawings; small, densely worked up one-of-a-kind artist's books; intricate, multi-layered paper cutouts; embroidery; sculpture; installation; animation and large-scale murals. She's won numerous awards and accolades and she is an Assistant Professor of Media Design at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City.

This is great art executed flawlessly and the people of the Bronx have to feel a little warmer, a little more joyful, every time they walk past it. On miserable days in February and March I'm sure that effect is increased tenfold. Three cheers for the MTA and thank you Mosaic Art Now for letting me know this work exists.

My old favorite MTA art was Tom Otternesses' Life Underground in the station at 14th Street and 8th. However, Bedford Park Boulevard's Community Garden has made me forget (sort of) about those clever bronzes. Sorry Tom.

Wanna write a guest post or two?

Newsflash! I was just asked to fly shotgun on a supply plane to The Bahamas next Monday morning. We'll drop off a load of modern conveniences to a small colony of ex-pats, spend the night then fly home Tuesday morning. Granted, it's only 24 hours, but that's plenty of time to get in a reef dive and a belly full of rice and peas. But still, it sounds so exotic and madcap. I'm going back to the same spot next month for a week, so this will be a taste of the glories to come in early August.

What this means too is that I'm looking for anybody who'd like to borrow my soapbox for a couple of days next week. If you'd like to write a guest post or two, let me know. All I ask is that your post remain somewhat topical (I define topical pretty broadly as a glance through my archives shows), and not get too political or religious. Wanna exercise your potty mouth? Set yourself free. Write about kitchens, bathrooms, sustainability, art, flooring, art history, everyday science, travel, food, projects, plans, hopes or dreams. Call Kitchen and Residential Design your very own for two whole days. Imagine!

A run through the granite yard

I popped into Cutting Edge Granite yesterday to check on some slabs of Santa Cecilia a client is using in a kitchen. At the risk of offending somebody, all I have to say is yawn.

Santa Cecilia is an inexpensive granite from Brazil and it screams "I got my kitchen at Lowe's!" Ugh. But at this stage of the game, any sale's a good sale. Right? Right?

While I was there, I saw a couple of real beauties. This is a granite that's commonly called Matrix. Well, at least, that's what it's called at the places I frequent.

Granite and natural stone slabs have common names that are kind of arbitrary and those names vary from place to place. They have scientific names too, but that only describes the kind of stone it is, not the name of the pattern. It can be confusing. Matrix is an OK name for this one, but I want to call it something more evocative.

Fresh from the truck was this beauty.

It didn't have a country of origin label on it, but there was a sticker with the hand-written name "Varde Raize." In looking at it though, I can tell it's a quartzite. Its name doesn't concern me too much.

I'm not so sure I'd like to see a whole kitchen done in this, but imagine the master bath it could transform. Wow.

So my question is this, any body out there ever see this stone before? These are photos taken on my phone, I ought to go back and photograph this quartzite properly. I smell a new obsession forming...