explore | interaction of color 2

Our memory of a specific color is terrible. 

Let's think of a common logo. Let's do McDonalds. Think about the yellow arches. When you think about that specific yellow, my version of yellow will be different from your version of yellow. In addition, the yellow I am thinking about won't match the McDonald's yellow. Nor will yours. 

We forget that there are vast shades of yellows but there aren't many words to describe a version of yellow. Of course, you can call it McDonald's yellow but often, we would think of the arches as just yellow. If you think about it, our perceptions of that yellow will be different too. The source can be the same but the person's perception of the yellow is the varying factor.

This reminds me of a time when a friend of mine got a new Canadian Goose jacket. I thought it was neat and unique. He would describe the color of the jacket to be "military green". We both agreed. However, there was a moment where it got a little dirty or I have seen a lot of Canada Geese around the campus grounds. My perception of the same jacket changed and it was not "military green". To me, it looked like "goose *hit". Does our perception of a color change over time? Does our externalities or environments affect our perception of color? Wouldn't this be a neat thing to research? That could possibly be a nice avenue to explore. 

Hence, our nomenclature for colors are useless if its not able to distinguish one from another. Josef Albers discusses the color situation quite elegantly, "Though there are innumerable colors-shades and tones- in daily vocabulary, there are only about 30 color names."

Second, Josef Albers compares our audio memories to our visual memories. If we were both Beatles fan, and we were assigned to hum out the melody of "Here Comes the Sun", we would be able to match the notes pretty spot on. Or, if we listened to another random radio song in the top 20 and we only listened to it twice, we are able to hum out the melody without any hesitation. 

Even though we have been exposed to the McDonald's logo much more than a random pop song, our ears do a better job of recollecting the melody than our eyes with colors. 

Interestingly, our audio memories are more effective and distinctive compared to our visual memories.

What does that say about our brain's priority on colors? I understand that we don't have any particular uses for distinguishing a color but do we have any reasons for easily identifying a melody from a song. I guess this would be a topic of discussion in an anthropology textbook.