The Illusion of Reality

So I'm blogging again so soon... but I swear I'm not procrastinating on studying (maybe!)  Even though I've been non-stop studying the last few days, do you think I'd just wear comfortable clothes? Nah. This is about as "comfy" as I'll get, haha. I actually spent the morning in my pyjamas, but it's also nice to get dressed up for no reason - I feel like it helps me maintain my sanity! Which, at exam time, is always a good thing. pants - c/o Sheinside sweater - Thrifted necklace - Claire's (Japan) beanie - stolen from boyfriend Here's more stuff that I'm trying to cram for my exams! But it's super interesting, don't worry ;) So much of what we think are solid "facts" about the world we live in are entirely made up by our brains. I didn't realise this until this year, but there is nothing inherently "blue" about an electromagnetic wavelength of 450nm, or inherently "red" about a wavelength of 750nm - yet when these wavelengths of light hit our eyes, we experience blue and red colours. Here's some amazing facts about colour vision and your brain (read these two posts about colour perception if you don't know much about it!) Your brain keeps colours constant. A purple wig keeps on looking purple with different kinds of light shining on it (i.e. when you move from inside to outside). Outside light is really blue, but inside light is really yellow - yet the purple wig keeps looking basically the same colour the whole time - even though the actual light being reflected to your eye from the wig has changed vastly in wavelength. And it's all got to do with context - you use the colour of other things in your world to determine what the colour of things should be. This is called colour constancy. Don't believe me? Both of this girl's eyes are the exact same shade of grey. Still don't believe me? This is what happens if you remove everything from the image except for the eyes. (image from here) There are also impossible colours that could never be perceived (though you can try here by crossing your eyes). This includes "bluish yellow" and "greenish red". You can't create them (I'm talking about mixing light here, not paints) - whenever you mix these opponent colours you just get grey. Apparently, you could never perceive these mixes of light. What's different about these colours that makes them different from mixing yellow and green, for instance? Again, this isn't anything unique about the physics of light - these colours are only "impossible" because your brain says so! One more: after images (ignore the seedy music on the video, it's actually really cool.) Your brain makes up colours that don't even exist, just because it was tired of the ones it was looking at. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr