What do you think are the most interesting ideas from the Beau Lotto video (available on ToK Assignments)? Post due October 9.
5 Comments
Anna Pearson
9/29/2012 12:22:47 pm
For me, the most interesting ideas of Beau Lotto was that two panels of color could be exactly the same yet our eye perceives the color differently only based on the environment. In one the background could be dark and our eye would see a different color than one where the background was light. Our senses are completely dependent on the environment we are in. If we were to suddenly change our environment and the color of the air in between our eye and an object than everything we know would have a different color. This only proves that color is relative. Color already changes with the lack of light or with more light. For example, at dawn and at dusk things look different because there is less light in the sky. This manipulation of color by light and environment cause us to question if there is a true reality of light. Can there ever be a true color of an object? I think that because light causes color and because light is always changing, an object never has a definite color. Is the color I perceive the same color as the person next to me perceives? Are they the same shade of color? We will never know but to realize that color is not definite is an important idea into discover more the truth about reality. Another idea of his that interested me was the idea of perceiving motion. When he spun the diamond, we saw it spinning one way and we knew what way it was spinning however, our brain flips the motion and makes us think that it is spinning the other direction. This perceptiveness of motion is caused by our eyes getting tired of following the moving object in one direction at such a rapid pace. From this we can also prove that what our brain is telling us is actually wrong. Are there other things in our life that our brain receives the wrong information? Do we perceive illusions as truth? Even though the limits of our senses contain our reality, we can try as hard as we can to expose what more our senses can discover and if it is possible for us to perceive more of the truth of our reality.
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Marina Teixeira
10/24/2012 06:11:33 am
What I found most interesting about Beau Lotto was the way that he presents why seeing matters. He presents a new whole idea in which what you see can be truly anything, what is actually going to affect what you see is the environment that the object is in, the amount of light it receives and various other factors. The way he presents this new information showing how light matters and how color matter is really actually intriguing and makes us question our senses. Through images and through the change in those images Beau Lotto is able to present to us a new view on how things truly are and how do outside factors affect the way we see the same object. However what was most interesting to me was to understand that all those factors really only matter when we are able to interpret what we have seen and use it. The way that the information is processed is what is essential, not the information itself, since information is basically all the same. I found that very interesting and the way he was able to prove it logically too. As I watched the video I was accepting all that he was saying, however after the video was over I would question his arguments, with my own sight.
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Gabriella Freeman
10/28/2012 10:10:05 am
Personally, i thought the most intriguing part of Beau Lottos was the idea he presented about the two panels. Lotto suggested that even though two panels of colour could be identical, the way we perceive the colour could change, depending on the environment we were in. The whole theory is surreal. If we changed the environment between our eyes and the image, then the colour we'd see would be entirely different. Colour is certainly dependent on the light of the habitat it is in, as well as who is seeing the image. After all, I could see one thing, and someone else could likely see another. Its interesting to think that colour itself isn't as stable or concrete as one would have thought.
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Athavan Balendran
11/5/2012 09:34:29 am
What I found most interesting about Beau Lotto’s presentation was the ability to translate light into sound and its effects. He presented a man that was temporarily unable to see and gave him a camera that would make different sounds based on the light reflected to find a plat on the ground. The plate on the ground reflected much different light than the carpet around it thus the man was able to pick it up with ease. The plate created a very different noise that allowed him to find it. Beau suggests that uses of these are prosthetics to help the blind find objects and navigate, as well as make music with color. Being a musician I know that there are certain individuals with “synesthesia” that are able to see a color and associate that color with a sound. It is very rare and is shown by some of the best musicians as it enhances your musical ability allowing you to go beyond playing the music in front of you, to creating your own music based on relations of color and those sounds. Like Beau Lotto said, this is fundamental to helping us understand the world around us and that we are not defined by the bits and pieces that make us up, we are defined by our environment and our interaction to the environment. As he showed, our environment can be completely the opposite of what we think it is, but that is how our brains work, they can’t see and understand everything around us so they find easier way to do that.
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Pedro Paulo
12/9/2012 03:31:56 am
The Beau Lotto video was very intriguing to watch since it exhibited how the human mind processes information through its senses. Rather than being something controlled by our senses our perception is totally dependent on the environment we are put in. In other words our perception is completely based on our responsiveness to external stimuli. It was revealing to see how the backgrounds and the different filters applied to each of the images could change the way we would percieve them. For example, when we saw darker colors under a black board at the same time we saw lighter colors in a white board we would percieve them in the same way, yet when we would put each of the green colors we believed were "identical" under the same conditions we could see that they are completely different. Therefore it is good to keep in mind after seeing the Beau Lotto video that the important is not how we percieve things but rather how we use such perceptions since they will always be subjective depending on the framework we are imposed to.
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