Perception: The Color IQ Test

Perception. It’s how we relate to the world. What we sense is how we understand our environment. Ultimately, our memories are shaped by what we perceive. One could argue that our entire being is just an I/O device of perception. I’d argue that we all have souls and are more than that, but that strays from the direction I’d like to take this.

So we all have these inputs: ears, eyes, tongues, and all the other stuff like that. But we only know what we perceive. Something that looks bright, sounds loud, or smells sweet to me is a perception that I can use to relate with others, but can never use to understand from another perspective. And we often times don’t think of things like this unless there is a known “disability” that we are trying to understand or overcome. For instance, I have friends who are partially color blind. I can comprehend that they see blue and green as the same color, but even still, that doesn’t change my perspective of what blue and green are.

There’s this test that I took the other day that got me thinking about this. It’s a color IQ test. Basically, there are four color continuums with starting and ending color tiles and you have to put other color tiles in order between the two. With a score of 0 being “perfect” and 99 being bad, I scored a 4, considerably lower than I anticipated. My issues were all in the blue region. While this doesn’t help us to be able to perceive what others do, it attempts to quantifiably relate my perception of color to another’s. And for the engineer in me, that’s an important first step; being able to quantify a deviation in perception, at the very least, acknowledges the differences, and at best, can give you an idea of how what you perceive relates to that of others.

We have vision tests and corrective procedures that also relate to eye sight. There, however, it is much easier to get everyone to a baseline of 20/20. It may be a bit easier to understand someone’s blurry vision than their colorblindness as simulating this is easier and makes more sense.

But what of our other senses? And mainly, I’m talking about sound and our ability to understand and decode waves of pressurized air.

We can test frequency ranges. They test both frequency and volume with most standard hearing tests. It’s known that, as you age, you lose higher frequencies. Have you ever heard a high-pitch sound (maybe a tv on in a room) that drove you crazy, but no one else could hear it and you couldn’t understand why? It doesn’t initially make sense to us as to how something so obnoxious could go unnoticed, yet clearly the others in the room lack your perception and can, therefore, not relate.

And then some people start to have all frequencies go, which, to my understanding, is more like truncating the amplitude than using a rolling filter; it’s more about volume than frequency. It’s easier to understand volume than pitch, in the same way that it is easier to understand poor eyesight than colorblindness, so I think, in general, this is a pretty easy concept to pick up on.

So, just like the color IQ test, we can have similar aural IQ test.

But the problem is that the connection to actual art is nearly non-existent. Because art is subjective. There is no IQ test for it. Dissonance and disorder can be beautiful and interesting, while melody can be stagnant and boring. In the same way, modern art can be intriguing while still life can be ordinary. There are no rules. Even guidelines are useless.

And this sort of thing drives someone like me crazy. The objectivity of opinion will always fall inferior to fact, and the fact is that there aren’t constants or magical formulas that make one piece of art good, while another bad.

So even if you can’t see the color blue or purple, or even if you can’t hear the frequency of the cymbals or of the bass, your ability to perceive art as good or bad doesn’t ever change. Because art is subjective. That’s how people can make “art” out of dead animals or Lou Reed can make an album of guitar feedback and still have the piece adorned with the label: “art.”

And we can argue properties. We can argue complexity and depth. We can argue tone. And these are all things we can try to put quantitative values to. That are ultimately meaningless… Because you can’t ever say x + y + z = art. It’s about perception. Except, unlike colorblindness or frequency hearing loss, you can’t ever quantify enough in order to adequately perceive as another perceives.

And I'll leave you with some Lou Reed.