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Why is the world losing color?

culture-critic.com

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Re: Why is the world losing color?

#121

Post by drivers99 »

mwkaufma wrote: post #77

Wait, his "graph" measures a greater gamut of colors in photos from the nineteenth century when they were all B/W? Who's still buying this retvrn hucksterism?

Current photos of old objects. I admit I had the same question based on the caption included in the graph itself, which just says "photos."

> a study of over 7,000 objects in the UK’s Science Museum found that the colors of consumer goods have been steadily neutralized since 1800. Bright, saturated tones have been giving way to gray, beige, and taupe for centuries.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#122

Post by cyberax »

mvdtnz wrote: post #75
cyberax wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a huge fan of color and go out of my way to buy bright colored cars This. If you look at the cars, pretty much the only "stock" bright color is red. I used to drive a grass green car (vinyl wrap), and it stood out everywhere. I wish car makers offered more color options by default.

Almost all car makers offer bright colours by default. In my driveway is a bright blue Subaru (it was hard to pick between the blue and eye-searing orange) and a bright copper coloured Suzuki. Mazda is becoming famous for their innovative colour options. Google "Nissan Micra colours" to see what even Japan's most conservative carmaker offers to those who care to look.

On selected models only :( E.g. Ford doesn't offer anything brighter than muted red on their Escape vehicles. They do have brightly-colored Mustangs, but nothing else.

Even Mazda doesn't offer them for all their vehicles.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#123

Post by crazygringo »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #85
crazygringo wrote: post #3

It's not "losing" color. At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments. But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out. Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being, well, monotone…

> At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments. Based purely on intuition, I want to agree with you. However, the data in the article suggests there's been a fairly consistent decrease in color of media…

The data in the article is either not representative or didn't go back far enough.

The best example, cars, only goes back to 1990. And the museum objects are objects a science museum happened to keep, that go back to 1800? Hardly representative of consumer objects in general. There isn't even a single chart about clothing.

Glancing through historical clothing and car magazines from the past century is going to tell you a lot more.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#124

Post by Karrot_Kream »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

It's not "losing" color. At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments. But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out. Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being, well, monotone…

There's definitely a cultural component to "modern taste". South Asian cultures have a preference for warm tones and many vibrant colors. East Asian cultures from developing and developed countries these days have lots of cool tones and monotone aesthetics. While I found the article a bit short on the "why", I do agree that the West has had a philosophical disdain for color from the Industrial era.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#125

Post by wil421 »

ryandrake wrote: post #87
JKCalhoun wrote: post #32

Wow, so much to rage about from the article. I am a huge fan of color and go out of my way to buy bright colored cars, phones, etc. (Not like I had any viable options for my MacBook Pro though). Resale value, it hides dirt well are some of the sadder excuses I hear for buying gray and "silver" cars (wouldn't be cool if they really were silver, not "metallic gray"). Meanwhile you spend your entire time owning the car…

Another thing that might also play a role is this styling trend of vehicles looking "meaner" and more and more aggressive. This was discussed[1] a bit on HN a while ago. Bright colors don't really match the "My vehicle is going to punch you in the face" styling (for cars and especially trucks) that has become popular. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425520

I think the generations below boomers prefer non-chrome options. The blacks and dark accents add to the meaner look.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#126

Post by kridsdale3 »

legitster wrote: post #76

May I make a case for brown? - Brown is an extremely warm color, and sucks up all of the ugly blues from unnatural light sources - Brown pairs well with all sorts of shades and colors, just like the millennial gray and white tones - Brown can come in all sorts of shades and vibrancies, but is not as stimulating as other colors - Brown hides dirt, scuffs, and stains extremely well Humans have spent most of our history…

We famously had "The Brown Era" in video game art direction for a while, maybe 2005-2010. Most people claimed they hated it.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#127

Post by crazygringo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #112
crazygringo wrote: post #3

It's not "losing" color. At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments. But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out. Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being, well, monotone…

> Modern taste is more about more neutral-colored foundations with color accents. Don't paint a whole room green -- have a gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background. Don't paint a whole wall orange -- have a beautiful orange-hued piece of art on the wall. It's just more tasteful to use color as one element, along with size, shape, texture, and so forth. I don't consider this to…

The drained-color thing is exclusive to a certain type of TV/movie drama, and then also a serious technical problem involving HDR device-side (which is a whole other story).

But if you watch any comedy, or reality show, or plenty of "normal" dramas, on a regular TV, the color is normal.

However, yes, there has been a certain trend involving Christopher Nolan, "gritty realism", and legal-political-military-crime themes, to do color grading to massively reduce saturation and aggressively push towards blue. I don't like it much but you can also just not watch that stuff. It's stylistic the same way film noir was. Some people hated that back in the day too, now it's just seen as a style of the time.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#128

Post by jajko »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

It's not "losing" color. At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments. But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out. Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being, well, monotone…

No thank you. I prefer rich colors, they consistently make world look a more lively place, the more the better. There is some getting used to of course, but it doesn't normalize at the same bottom that sea of grey/white/black is.

I hate this with passion with cars - sea of grey in western Europe. Heck, both of our cars are grey - we always buy used ones and there was simply no other option that wasn't 10k more expensive for params we wanted and were willing to pay. It looks bland, boring, unimaginative. One of top reasons why buy new - one can actually choose something nicer.

I've spent 6 months backpacking all over India and boy do they use crazy intense colors all over and everywhere including clothing - orange, purple, pink, very bright, both men and women. A very, very nice visual experience one doesn't get used to. Then coming back to western civilization where literally everybody dresses in black or dark grey during winter. Its just sad view, like winter with low amount of sunlight isn't depressing enough, no lets add some more monotonous colors.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#129

Post by mwkaufma »

shoxidizer wrote: post #120
mwkaufma wrote: post #77

Wait, his "graph" measures a greater gamut of colors in photos from the nineteenth century when they were all B/W? Who's still buying this retvrn hucksterism?

The graph is from a study of objects held in the collection of a museum, not photographs by year they were taken. It says so in this article. https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer...

Yeah you're right, I jumped the gun there. On the other hand, color trends of science museum exhibits are a cherry-picked example. "Culture Critic"'s whole shtick is to put a photo of a modernist building next to an ornamental one, and this just seems to be that, but with a superficial layer of scientism.

Re: Why is the world losing color?

#130

Post by kridsdale3 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #37
zuInnp wrote: post #21

For me, it is very apparent in movies nowadays. I watched the Lord of the Rings over Christmas, and I was stunned by how colorful the movie is. Even in the darkest scenes in Mordor, it felt more colorful than movies of today. Today, it looks like everything is shot in log and then someone does not add the saturation back. But I am also guilty of this .. when I got my new camera, my graded clips also looked very flat,…

Wild. Because that is one of the first, most heavily color graded films I can recall. Theoden's coming out from under the spell of Saruman is the most hit-you-ver-the-head use of color-grading that I can think of. (And, perhaps in a fantasy film it's fine.)

Last night I watched Erin Brokovitch (2000) and it was like looking at film that had been partially sepia-processed with the heavy handedness of the grading.

The Matrix was a year before that, but they had a narrative reason to use grading, and did so quite well.

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