This week's homework is about exploring and studying two very specific, technical words: Qualia and Valence.
Qualia and Valence Review
After watching and reading the following:
Include some points of note on your understanding of Qualia and Valence, and also how you might apply this knowledge to design processes.
The concept of qualia comes from the latin word "qualis" which literally means "what kind of, what sort/type of". Therefore, the wider meaning of Qualia is to describe the experience of an inner feeling, emotion, sensation, thought, perception. It can be used to describe the way in which things seem to appear to us personally. Qualia is used in contemporary psychology to describe a qualitative attribute that is happening in our inner self, which makes us react and feel in a certain way that is hard to communicate to others when they are not experiencing the same thing (eg: emotions, reactions, mental states such as pain and of course, the perception of colour). Qualia can in fact be applied to the perception and sensation of colour, because each one of us might perceive the same colour in a different way, influenced by many physiological, cultural and mental aspects. Therefore it could be hard to explain to other in a detailed and accurate way, our very own perception of a colour and the way it makes us feel. What I think is a bright red might not be the same feeling someone else is perceiving. Therefore, our own qualia affects the qualitative properties of an object (which cannot be described by a correct amount of physical or quantitative information).
Qualia can be used to describe 2 qualities of colour:
the actual nature of colour (is it an intrinsic property of colour or is it something we perceive? What "type of property" is it?). We might call this "objective" property of colour. What colour is it? However, this "objective property of colour" then creates a second issue: to what degree is this property actually objective? Is this colour an intrinsic property of the object? Does this intrinsic property affect the object in any way?
the nature of our experience of colour (what "sort of" mental property is it??). This might be subjective or qualitative colour, depending on our own interior experience. Colour is then considered a neural property. subjective colour as a neural property would rule out even the possibility that forms of life with different physiological structures, or intelligent robots, could have experiences of the same qualitative type as our experiences of red.
Image shows a representation of inverted qualia spectrum (theory according to which, even though 2 people see the same object and might describe it in the same way with similar terms, their inner feeling and perception of the object and its colours might be totally different. In this case the image shows how to people are looking at the same strawberry, but one sees it green, the other perceives the colour red ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
VALENCE
Valence is a characteristic of emotions that determines our personal emotional response to something happening around us. Valence measures the affect these emotions have on us (whether it may be a positive affective valence of appeal, or a negative affect of dissonance and repulsion). The term "valence" is currently used in many disciplines, including science, psychology, biology and linguistics. Generally speaking, all these disciplines use the term valence to indicate the connection and relation between two or more entities, explain how they are linked to each other and the effects of these connections (which all conclude in having either positive or negative valence). This article 'Uncovering the Mysteries of Affective Neuroscience – the Importance of Valence Research with Mike Johnson' explains how in neuroscience, anything that triggers certain brain functions to react in a positive/feel good way, have positive valence. The contrary works for negative valence. Another interesting way of describing these experiences, is by using a metaphor that refers to the geometrical concepts of symmetry and asymmetry. Johnson (Johnson, 2018) refers to negative feelings and responses as anti-symmetry patterns (pain), and symmetry state referring to positive experiences (pleasure and appeal). Valence is important to us as human beings, because when we experience a conscious moment, what we are looking for is to understand whether the experience is positive and can bring value to us, or if it's quite the opposite.
How can I address these concepts in a creative way, in my design practice? (follow up to topics addressed in class, including colour lightness, brightness, colour palettes, colour combinations etc...)
One possible option could be exploring alternative colour palettes, that don't follow standard colour associations (complimentary, split-complimentary etc...), and changing the brightness, contrast and other technical ratios to generate alternative colour combinations, that still look aesthetically good together, still trigger some type of resonance and emotional response, and can still be used in a creative environment. What type of effect do these alternative colour combinations create?
In order to address this prompt, I tried experimenting with colours using Adobe Colour palette, and selecting "Custom" colour combination to have freedom of choosing any colour on the wheel. I made different experiments and versions of colour combinations, to explore different hue, contrast, saturation and brightness levels within the same colour palette. I then tried to explore these findings, analyse the results and understand what type of (emotional) response I was feeling. Below are some examples (screenshots and explanations).
EXPERIMENT A - Playing with different saturations in the same colour paletteI find that Adobe Colour wheel is a great tool for generating colour palettes, but I don't really appreciate is the fact that it lacks freedom of creativity: once you select the type of colour combination you're looking for, and select a colour, this tool automatically generates a defined colour palette for you, without being able to slightly adjust the colours in terms of contrast, hue or lightness (except when using Custom colours like I did in this case). I guess this can be a positive aspect when designing for graphic content or UI Design, where a certain rigour is required to make sure the appropriate colours are chosen to ensure accessible, readable and clear content. However, when exploring more creative pathways, I believe it's interesting to break these boundaries and understand alternative connections between colours.
In this experiment A, I tried mixing bright saturated colours, with less saturated ones, and trying to use them to create a colour palette that still appears harmonious and balanced (even though the chosen colours are not represented by any standard colour combination and have different saturation levels). The resulting colour palette (image on the left) contains both warm and cool colours, highly saturated and more desaturated colours. Despite this, colours seem to complete each other in some way, with the saturated purple and bright green complimenting the less saturated pink, orange and yellow. This colour palette reminds me of a warm, sunny summer day, so I guess, overall, it conveys positive emotions (I'd say it almost has a relaxing effect on me ^^). Once I created this colour pattern, I tried to play around with the different colours, to see if I could use them in a visually creative way. I ended up having quite some funny visual compositions, as show in the screenshots below. (I played with background blur, layer blur, colour burning, colour difference and motif-making)
I particularly enjoy this coloured composition, and the wide range of colours it creates by simply overlaying desaturated, coloured circles over one another. I also tried to experiment making a video version of this composition available here https://youtube.com/shorts/AKiUbUUFuuE?si=7hLfnKnKUntGFGfT
2. EXPERIMENT B - Desaturated colour palette
After doing so, I tried to create a second alternative colour palette, this time decreasing the saturation of all colours, so that they would appear blurry and dull. The resulting colour palette appears below.
I used these colour to further experiment with colour effects, layering and organising shapes and colours to create an emotional response with affective valence and resonance. In this case, this colour palette contains desaturated colours which look like pastel colours, so very delicate, kind of neutral and light. Despite the fact that usually this type of light colour is culturally associated with positive feeling and valence (spring, flowers, sunlight, warmth, blooming, nice weather etc....), I felt the opposite. Since I first started playing around with those colours, I immediately felt like they had a negative emotional valence on me...I felt a bit unease, like some connection between those colours was disturbing me. When playing around with those colours to create a visual composition, I couldn't visualise a pattern, a theme or a motif containing those colour together, because everything I made would keep disturbing me even more. Therefore I simply used those colours to create a composition of pure visual noise, playing around with size, layer blurs and effects.
3. EXPERIMENT C - "super" analogous colours
Personally, one of my favourite colours is Purple. I have clothes and accessories of different shades of purple, and sometimes I wear them together, because I know they are slightly different shades and tints of purple, but most people think I'm wearing the same colour from head to toes. This made me wonder, at what point can we distinguish colours between each other? What's the break point? When do we say 2 colours are identical? How do we distinguish one colour from the other? I tried to develop a purple colour palette using different hues of purple, which are very close to each other on the colour wheel, following a radial direction.
After positioning the colours in order from darkest to lightest, I played around mixing up the colours together, to create a coloured grid. (screenshot below)
Personally, I find this image very satisfying and enjoyable, because I love all things related to colour purple, and seeing different shades of purple mixed together is just so visually relaxing and satisfying. It would be interesting to show this image to other people, and maybe try to analyse what's their interpretation of it and what valence the image has according to them.
I took this experiment even further, this time using even more similar shades of purple-violet, as shown in the screenshot below.
In conclusion, I noticed that the smaller the squares are, the harder it is to distinguish colours that are so similar to each other. Therefore, factors that affect and distort our perception of similar colours include:
size
surrounding colours (by putting together shades of the same colour, which are already so similar to each other, it is harder to distinguish them when they are so close to each other in a given space)
gradient effect: when shades of the same colour are put together in order of lightness (from darkest to lightest or viceversa) it is harder to distinguish each shade. They just tend to look like a gradient effect on screen.
These are all topics that I find very interesting, and would love to explore them further in my TCRE assignments, especially related to motion, sound and 3D technology. I'm not sure how to develop this yet, but I was thinking of maybe creating a 3D environment, in which specific areas of the digital space evolve/transform their own colours, sound and light in a more or less rhythmic way. I could perhaps include some interactive elements in response to certain actions performed by users, in order to make things look a bit more confusing for the viewer!!
OTHER POSSIBLE TOPICS TO EXPLORE:
Start to go through the Research and Design Toolkit on the Module and bookmark, take note of, or write a few points on info/links etc you find interesting in the Toolkit and why? Ruminate on how you might be able to apply some of the research material in new or creative ways and jot down some ideas.
colour resonance: how the same colours can have different resonance and emotional valence based on context, environment and comparison with other colours, brightness.
transformative colour illusions
positive and negative emotional valence in response to colour. Managing emotions
Audiovisual resonance affecting limbic and sympathetic system awareness
Colour/sound resonance
Colour pitch, intensity, rhythm, frequency, brightness, frequency
states of arousal and awareness of mind, thoughts and emotions (are aware of what we're seeing, feeling?
transformative colour, light and sound in a 3D (interactive?) environment. explore 3D colour spaces
Qualitative and quantitative experience, what is the quality of experience?
Conceptual and experiential - the difference between the idea and the reality (does my experience relate to my initial thought and concept of that experience? What I was thinking before vs what I'm feeling/experiencing now
colour contrast - what creates contrast?
what can create/trigger the illusion of movement in digital media?
how does colour relate to sound? how do they influence each other?
warm and cold colours - can we perceive cold colours as being warm, and viceversa? what triggers this experience? How can the environment, context and surroundings influence our experience of warm and cold colours?
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