Re: Alien colour spaces and stuff

Javier BF wrote:

>>>Are their eyes tetrachromatic like those of most birds, too?
>>
>>They're closely related to Zireen, and have pretty much the same range
>>of color vision. They can't see red, but they see into the ultraviolet
>>range; their primary colors are yellow, turquoise, indigo, and
>>ultraviolet. "Green" is a secondary color produced by combining yellow
>>and turquoise.
>
>
> I assume that by primary and secondary colors you refer
> to the composition of retinal stimuli. But what are their
> basic, unmixed colour percepts? I mean, in humans "yellow"
> is experienced as a completely basic, pure, unmixed colour
> percept, even though it is produced by stimulating both
> the S and M cones, that is, even though it is the result
> of a secondary retinal stimulus. The same goes for "white",
> which is the epitome of purity even though it is produced
> by a tertiary retinal stimulus combining S, M and L cones.
> Let alone black, which is the colour percept caused by
> the lack of retinal stimulus.
That's something I haven't thought much about; it's hard enough to
imagine "turquoise" as a primary color, let alone which combinations of
colors would be perceived as "basic". I've tried to get some ideas of
what color looks like to them by hue-shifting pictures in Paint Shop
Pro, but it's still not something I have a good intuitive sense for.

> Of course, labels like "turquoise" and "violet" for the
> Sangari/Zireen basic colours in the above schemes (as well
> as "orange" and "pink" for the extra percepts of mutant
> tetrachromat women) are misleading, since for us humans
> "turquoise" doesn't refer to a basic colour percept at all,
> but to one of our four binary hues (orange, yellowgreen,
> turquoise and purple)(*), a chromatic perception consisting
> of green and blue percepts experienced simultaneously.
> While the "turquoise" of the Sangari/Zireen would be
> supposed to be experienced as a pure, basic, unmixed
> percept, independent of the human colour percepts of
> green and blue, and thus with little to do with what
> we humans think of as turquoise.
Yes, while on the other hand the color translated as "blue" is perceived
as a mixture of turquoise and indigo, and not a pure color. And I'm
going to have to get rid of the word for "red", since they can't
perceive red light. (Tirelat was originally a personal language before I
revived it as a Sangari language, and I haven't got around to fixing the
color vocabulary.)

Or I could recycle "red" and use it for one of those indescribable
Zireen/Sangari "basic" hues.