I have protanopia or red-green color blindness. No I don’t see in black and white and yes I know that your shirt is blue…probably. Looking at the readings today, considering the Many Eyes Make Light Work project that we just finished, and my own experience I have found that society and the people that live in it tend to define themselves with color. In the Robots Reading Vogue project we can see how color defines a generation of a certain cultural subset. We see how schools identify themselves by their school colors. “I bleed blue” or something to that affect has appeared on many a BYU bumper sticker.

For me being color blind though, I tend to not associate things so heavily with color. I will focus more on shape or location. When someone is trying to direct me I’ve noticed that they would say something like, “Do you see the big red building over there? Turn left.” To which I’ll normally ask for a landmark like a business name or address. Even when describing a person on the other side of a room I’m more likely to say, “Oh Matt? He’s the guy in the glasses sitting in the corner,” instead of “Oh Matt? He’s the guy in the green shirt.”

I still find these kind of articles and projects immensely satisfying to observe. I fortunately can still see enough color to appreciate it. Still I find it interesting that in a world that defines itself by the colors it sees I just don’t care about that as much. Or at the very least I feel like my definition of color is different and therefore not as relevant to someone who sees color “normally.”