Wendy Carlos and color perception

In addition to being one of the most historically significant pioneers in electronic music, Wendy Carlos is fascinated with how people see and hear. I am, too. She has been conducting experiments on color perception for over 50 years. Wendy created a cool little red/green color lightbox and a series of pages that show how two monochrome images can create full-color images when combined. She explains the origins of her interests:

Interestingly enough, most primates which evolved in Africa, Europe and Asia and environs posses a similar wide range as ours, while those which evolved later in “The New World” of the Americas usually have the narrower range of human color deficiency. The technical distinction is between: “trichromats (human and old-world primates)” and “dichromats (new-world primates and the common human color deficiencies).” Anyway, I built a lot of amusing devices way back in grade-school that allowed me to tinker with mixing various colors, both with paints (subtractive mixing of: magenta, yellow and cyan) and with colored lights (additive mixing of: red, green and blue). I read everything on color I could get my hands on, and with many years of more or less scientific experimentation, I thought I knew a bit about the subject. But I was wrong.

Experiments in Color Vision (Wendy Carlos)

Wendy’s music (recommended: ‘Tron‘ and ‘A Clockwork Orange‘ soundtracks, Switched-On Bach, and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer)

Image: Another amazing Andy Gilmore design via bridbird.com.