Can you imagine how you would describe color to someone who has never seen it? What words can adequately convey what we see when we perceive light at various wavelengths? There are ways around it, of course, in somewhat synesthetic language – one might describe the color red as hot, spicy, or vivid. The color brown can be earthy, warm, or deep. It’s difficult to talk about color without using color as a comparison point. One might say that orange is a combination of red and yellow, or that purple can range from a blueish-reddish to a reddish-blueish. But how do you describe a color that is considered forbidden?

Indeed, there was an article released in January that explains how we are equipped such that we are only able to perceive red or green – blue or yellow, and that it may be possible to override this, resulting in the ability to perceive a hue that is not necessarily the muddy brown that happens when you mix red and green paint together, and also not the color green, as when you mix together blue and yellow, but rather a different color all together that is apparently difficult to adequately explain.

The article does, however, fall victim to somewhat dubious science reporting. For example, it is notable to point out that the article somewhat overhypes the results in conjunction with the information provided in the original study itself by describing these new colors as “glorious to behold”. Nowhere is this mentioned, simply that participants tended to be tongue-tied in describing what they saw, rather than describing any kind of reverent awe. It also gives inadequate detail on the experiments performed and fails to provide nuance. The experiments themselves were not so black and white that the participants unfailingly viewed a bright, shiny new color with ease. In the initial experiment, some reported seeing green dots on a red field, or vice versa.

“The second type of percept, that of a pattern of red and green dots [...] could be represented by a pattern of marbles viewed at a distance such taht each marble is just resolvable. Then, instead of seeing a uniform color, which he might describe as purple, the observer would seet he distinct red and blue elements. The proportion of red and blue elements would vary as it did in the first analogy, so the field could be described as both red and blue everywhere, but not as a mixture of red and blue anywhere.

The first thing I considered was pointilism. However, there is a distinct difference in sensation. Take for example the clip above of a painting by George Seurat, whose individual color points may seem chaotic or unrealistic at a micro level, but visually combine at a distance to appear as another shade entirely, which also means that no new color has been perceived, but rather an illusion of two existing colors. Another minor point of contention is that Crane mentions “over a dozen” of various participants having experienced what could be seen as a new color, but not able to be described. This is not a large sample size.

So let’s say these people did, in fact, perceive a color that could not be viewed without special manipulation.  In 2006, researcher Po-Jang Hsieh decided to duplicate and slightly vary the original experiment done in the 80s by Crane. He had participants view the contrasting colors together as Crane did, and then had participants pick out the corresponding color on a color map. I feel troubled by this step; if these people did see a color that was indescribable and unable to be viewed without special conditions, then it is entirely possible that they were merely picking the best possible (albeit not exact) color they could given the available choices and it is not accurately portraying what they did experience. This does not necessarily prove or disprove the existence of ‘impossible colors’.

Conversely, to cast a skeptic eye on the results is not at all unwarranted. Take a look at the gradient above; it was made from red fading to green, and this is the rough overlap in between. It does get muddy and somewhat difficult to describe, doesn’t it? Below are three colors that I picked out of the middle. How would you describe them?

Fortunately, the issue with Hsieh’s experiment is illuminated by researcher Vincent Billock.

Billock argues that Hsieh’s study failed to generate the colors because it left out a key component of the setup: eye trackers. Hsieh merely had volunteers fix their gaze on striped images; he didn’t use retinal stabilization.

When Billock moved on to yet again recreate Crane’s testing, his subjects reported seeing these “yellowish-blue” and “greenish-red” colors to varying degrees of success.  In some, mixed colors were not perceived, nor were any kind of “new” colors, but instead they experienced spurious pattern formations, as well as variances such as broken imagery. Some described it as “red dust on a green field” or vice versa. The experiment was adjusted – one of the changes was to adjust the luminosity of each color to be equal. What this means in simpler terms is that when both colors are converted to grayscale, they become equivalent and indiscernible values. (Prepare for your eyes to be burned!)

What he found was that when two colors are of different luminosity, more of the reported “muddy” colors were prevalent, such as in Hsieh’s experiments. With equiluminesence, the results began to come back as – you guessed it – an unidentified, new color.

The percept was a homogeneous mixture color whose red and green components were as clear and as compelling as the red and blue components of a purple.

Interestingly, these results grew more consistent after multiple testings, suggesting that viewing said “forbidden colors” requires some previous exposure to help strengthen the final effect.

All-in-all, duplications of this experiment have been few and far between, so try not to hold your breath waiting for Pantone to jump on this and officially mark a new color for the art world to obsess on. There is something happening in these experiments, something that could yield fascinating results and has certainly sparked the imagination on the oft-dreamt-about fantasy of new, fantastic colors for the human eye to behold, and I, for one, will be interested to see what comes of these fundamental experiments in the future. On the flip side, nothing extraordinary could be happening at all – perhaps the subjects are seeing each color one after the other in quick succession, and certainly being unable to explain what you’re seeing complicates the need for precision in such tests. For the time being, I am reluctant to solidly name these “new colors” until more results are offered and am frankly saddened by the number of outlets that have presented this as an irrefutable fact.

Source material:
Original research by Crane
Further research by Billock

More poor science reporting:
i09