The Psychic Paintbox (Sensing Colours Non-Visually)

[AgProv]

I could think of a better title, given time, but there doesn't seem to be a thread to attach this little oddness to.

Story: spent this afternoon in Chester to catch up with old friends. Relaxed, cheerful, pleasant day. I even managed to fit in a visit to the local hobby shop to buy paints - with a particular project in mind I wanted to replenish bright, vivid, colours, and bought primary red, blue and yellow, or as near as I could get, along with a fairly lurid lavender purple. The rest of the bag consisted of the boring everyday practical colours for my sort of modelling and painting (various skin tones for figure work). These come in identically sized and sealed plastic bottles about three inches tall - the idea being that after agitating to mix the pigments, they are then squeezed directly onto the palette . ((So well sealed that I had no worries about putting them directly into my pocket, in fact!) I walked out of the shop, transaction completed, with a deep coat pocket containing nine bottles of paint. Zipped it up, and those bottles would then have shaken themselves around randomly in my pocket.

Scroll forwards about twenty minutes; one friend is in the middle of a long phone call to the mechanic repairing his car. The rest of us are marking time to let him finish. For want of something to do I put my hand in my coat pocket, and remembered the paint bottles were in there. I ran one over my fingers and thought "This is the blue." I took the bottle out. The bright primary blue. I put it back, and picked another.

"Oh, this is that God-awful shade of lavender purple." (These was a definite need for this for a particular painting task...)
It was that God-awful shade of lavender purple.

The next prediction was for a random choice of vivid scarlet red to come out of the magic pocket, followed by canary yellow... right every time, something like a dozen choices at random.

I wondered if I could turn this about a little and begin by saying to myself, even before reaching into my pocket "I am going to pick out the bright primary red" and rummage for the correct bottle - this worked too.

Now I remember reading about a "Colour Therapist" who made the extravagant claim that all colours have their specific vibration and that even with a blindfold on, people can use their fingertips to "see" in colour. I'd always doubted that: seemed a little far-fetched. (There's a bit in one of Colin Wilson's Occult-series bricks about something like this? But that's all I can remember. )

So.. that's my little mystery for today. Still trying to figure it out.

 

[SimonBurchell]

Even skin cells are apparently photo sensitive. If I remember right, I once read a credible claim that you can train yourself to recognise colours by touch alone, I've never had the patience to try. Since you are obviously artistically inclined, perhaps subconsciously your photosensitive skin cells are recognising the colours, assuming I'm not spouting utter rubbish.

 

[Recycled1]

I was at university in the 60's with a girl who could tell the colour of things blindfold, just by holding them.
She was sensible and sober, and she couldn't explain it , herself.

 

[Mooka]

Is this a type of synesthesia I wonder, like some people are able to see music, some can feel colours?

 

[brownmane]

I used to do this with Pick Up Sticks, as a kid, just for amusement. There are only 3 colours, but I could tell which one I had by a slight difference that I perceived in the temperature of the sticks. Red was warmer than the blue and green. Not sure as to how accurate I was, but it had to have been fairly accurate for it to amuse me.

 

[PeteS]

I used to do this with Pick Up Sticks, as a kid, just for amusement. There are only 3 colours, but I could tell which one I had by a slight difference that I perceived in the temperature of the sticks. Red was warmer than the blue and green. Not sure as to how accurate I was, but it had to have been fairly accurate for it to amuse me.

I remember decades ago a girl in the North East of the UK who had been blind from birth was reported as having the ability to detect different colours by touch. She apparently also had a sense of different temperatures for each colour, having learned what colour applied to each variance in perceived temperature, even though she had no sense of what colour actually was. She was tested numerous times and with a 90% accuracy I recall.

 

[AgProv]

I've been playing with the colours again, trying to get more experimental info. I went back to my paintboxes (possibly about two hundred pots and tins of paint accumulated over the years). I focused on identically sized and shaped plastic bottles, as in the photo. Two interesting things:

i) The sensation appears to work best with primary colours, the purest and more vividly primary, the better. This is probably what I noticed on Tuesday as a new sensation. - I don't buy the base primary colours very often as to be honest I don't use them all that much. As you go further away from the primaries (in the picture above, for instance, there's a secondary shade, a darker red colour labelled as "Blood Red"). There's an obvious difference between the primary red and the "blood red", which appears to be a mix of maybe 95% pure red with the remaining 5% being largely blue with just perhaps a little black. (at least, if I were mixing that shade, this is the route I'd take; 19 parts red, 1 part royal or ultramarine blue). One is primary, the second has taken the first couple of footsteps on the "purple" track. They feel different - I can tell them apart without looking. So first hypothesis - the further you go from the primary colour, the more the sensations get "confused" or perhaps diminish as more "impurity" creeps in.

If I go to the WW2 palate of paints - "Forty Shades of Mud" - which involves a lot of shades of brown and muddy greens - as more mixing of shades will have happened to create these, there's less success in blindly identifying them - the most I've got here, in trying to identify a blindly chosen colour, is "possibly brown" or "possibly green".

ii) In the picture above there's a shade, showing brown here, called "Dark Rust". This is designed to replicate a realistic rusty flaking on old untended metal; I bought it out of interest to see how it works in practice. (I reasoned if it doesn't, then nothing wasted, it can go in the box and there's bound to be an application for it somewhere).
I'm trying to find a less "vague" way to describe this, but it felt slightly different to the fingertips. Nothing I can easily describe. Knowing there are going to be flakes of metallic colourants in there - to get that shabby, flaky, slightly scabby look of rusty iron, I suppose, but in scale-
I had an idea, and brought out various metallic paints - which will have a higher proportion of actual powdered metal in them. A definitely different feel. I think if I practice, I could confidently blind-select between chrome silver, "gold" or bronze!

Now wondering what "pure" white or black could add to the experiment!

 

[Mooka]

Curious as to what you feel. I mean is it a slight temperature variation or some sort of sensation regards touch, or does a picture of the colour pop into your head? Or is it something you can‘t describe, but just ‘know’.
I’ve been doing some artwork this evening so thought I’d experiment too. I used cadmium yellow, deep red and Prussian blue. I didn’t get a single one right out of five rounds of guessing!

 

[brownmane]

Curious as to what you feel. I mean is it a slight temperature variation or some sort of sensation regards touch, or does a picture of the colour pop into your head? Or is it something you can‘t describe, but just ‘know’.
I’ve been doing some artwork this evening so thought I’d experiment too. I used cadmium yellow, deep red and Prussian blue. I didn’t get a single one right out of five rounds of guessing!

I would say yes to sensation of touch and coolness and warmth.
As @AgProv mentioned, I do believe the true primary colours are the easiest to sense differences. I did forget that Pick Up Sticks also had yellow sticks. The difference between blue and green, iirc, took a little more concentration, and now it may have been due to green not being primary colour.

@AgProv, in your pic your bottles have labels. Do these interfere with trying to detect the colours, or is enough of the bottle showing the enough of the colour so that the label doesn't interfere?

I'm pretty sure that if not enough of the colour were available to hold, I would be confused by the label colours.

 

[brownmane]

To people who are curious and have never tried, definitely have a little fun. Start, I would suggest, with a few primary and or bright colours of same objects (balloons, balls, sticks, anything that you can get in multiple colours).

Even though I feel red as warmer than blue, try your own sense. I would not say that you would feel them as I do, but hold each one and get a sense of what sensation you get. Then hold another and do the same. Once you have a sense of what is different, then try to pick up items randomly and guess the colour. If it's wrong, hold the colour you guessed and then the one you guessed incorrectly and try to feel a difference between the two. That's how I familiarized myself with how each colour felt different.

 

[brownmane]

Just as an aside, but maybe relevant to perception, I also have practised reiki.

I don't really use it, but I can sense, without touching, but hovering my hands over an area on someone's body, exactly where their pain is coming from. I do this sometimes when friends are having back or shoulder pain. I know that that alone does make obvious for where they are feeling the pain, but I can identify the exact sore spot. This is not really a sensation that I can describe.

I think this all has to do with sensing subtle energy. Colours have energy as well. It's light.

 

[eburacum]

This is a very interesting experience. I suspect that it does demonstrate a remarkable capability of the human mind, but it probably doesn't involve directly sensing colours through touch. My suggestion is that your fingertips remembered the feel of each bottle as you placed it in your pocket, and this memory enabled you to sort these bottles out accurately without using sight.

But surely all these bottles are identical, apart from the colours?

I suspect that there are very small differences that you might not notice consciously, but which are sufficient to distinguish between them. For a start these bottles seem to be made of a soft plastic, and they are almost manufactured in batches at different times, so the bottles themselves will probably have slightly different textures on the outside. Additionally, the base of the bottle has a seam of some sort that seems to vary in orientation slightly, especially when compared to the location of the label. I can see some variation of the orientation of the seam and label in the photo supplied; additionally there may be some other clues in the smoothness of the label and its application. On top of the bottle is a tiny dimple with a central peak of varying height, which is another kind of variation that you may have detected unconsciously.

Finally the contents of the bottle - the paint, its suspended pigments and flakes, and any volatile liquids present in the airspace, could all contribute to an almost imperceptible difference in quality that your fingers may have committed to memory. I used to work in a lab testing paint samples, and the different colours can have very different qualities - white paint is a completely different type of fluid to red, as I recall.

In short, it is an amazing feat of discrimination between almost identical items, but it probably isn't a paranormal ability.

 

[Salmonellus]

This is a very interesting experience. I suspect that it does demonstrate a remarkable capability of the human mind, but it probably doesn't involve directly sensing colours through touch. My suggestion is that your fingertips remembered the feel of each bottle as you placed it in your pocket, and this memory enabled you to sort these bottles out accurately without using sight.

But surely all these bottles are identical, apart from the contents?

I suspect that there are very small differences that you might not notice consciously, but which are sufficient to distinguish between them. For a start these bottles seem to be made of a soft plastic, and they are almost manufactured in batches at different times, so the bottles themselves will probably have slightly different textures on the outside. Additionally, the base of the bottle has a seam of some sort that seems to vary in orientation slightly, especially when compared to the location of the label. I can see some variation of the orientation of the seam and label in the photo supplied; additionally there may be some other clues in the smoothness of the label and its application. On top of the bottle is a tiny dimple with a central peak of varying height, which is another kind of variation that you may have detected unconsciously.

Finally the contents of the bottle - the paint, its suspended pigments and flakes, and any volatile liquids present in the airspace, could all contribute to an almost imperceptible difference in quality that your fingers may have committed to memory. I used to work in a lab testing paint samples, and the different colours can have very different qualities - white paint is a completely different type of fluid to red, as I recall.

In short, it is an amazing feat of discrimination between almost identical items, but it probably isn't a paranormal ability.

Lego blocks might be an interesting "trainer" object. They come in different colours but are identical in shape and size. You could avoid the "subtle differences" problem by circulating through different sets of blocks.

 

[brownmane]

Lego blocks might be an interesting "trainer" object. They come in different colours but are identical in shape and size. You could avoid the "subtle differences" problem by circulating through different sets of blocks.

Definitely. While @eburacum mentions that there might be subtle differences in the paint bottles, using numerous blocks, or in my example, sticks, does not account for the fact that I did not hold only one of each colour. I did not think of that small detail.

 

[PeteS]

This is a very interesting experience. I suspect that it does demonstrate a remarkable capability of the human mind, but it probably doesn't involve directly sensing colours through touch. My suggestion is that your fingertips remembered the feel of each bottle as you placed it in your pocket, and this memory enabled you to sort these bottles out accurately without using sight.

But surely all these bottles are identical, apart from the colours?

I suspect that there are very small differences that you might not notice consciously, but which are sufficient to distinguish between them. For a start these bottles seem to be made of a soft plastic, and they are almost manufactured in batches at different times, so the bottles themselves will probably have slightly different textures on the outside. Additionally, the base of the bottle has a seam of some sort that seems to vary in orientation slightly, especially when compared to the location of the label. I can see some variation of the orientation of the seam and label in the photo supplied; additionally there may be some other clues in the smoothness of the label and its application. On top of the bottle is a tiny dimple with a central peak of varying height, which is another kind of variation that you may have detected unconsciously.

Finally the contents of the bottle - the paint, its suspended pigments and flakes, and any volatile liquids present in the airspace, could all contribute to an almost imperceptible difference in quality that your fingers may have committed to memory. I used to work in a lab testing paint samples, and the different colours can have very different qualities - white paint is a completely different type of fluid to red, as I recall.

In short, it is an amazing feat of discrimination between almost identical items, but it probably isn't a paranormal ability.

This might have applied if brownmane had handled the bottles continually while painting models , but these were brand new from the shop and dropped straight into his pocket. I doubt that anyone could remember very tiny variations in the bottle mouldings from the short time in his hand. It would make a great fake paranormal conjuring trick though.

 

[ChasFink]

Is this a type of synesthesia I wonder, like some people are able to see music, some can feel colours?

It seems to be the opposite of synesthesia as generally understood. Synesthesia appears to be the input of stimuli in normal ways - e.g. music as sound - but perceiving them in unusual ways - e.g. music visually. This is perceiving things normally through unusual inputs.

I remember a comic book which had a lead-blindfolded Superman tell the color of a playing card because he knew the different thicknesses red and black ink generally deposited on cards. I wondered if he couldn't have just felt the shapes. Could @AgProv just be reading the labels by touch? Could ink variations explain other, similar experiences?

I'm not so sure someone couldn't remember individual details of brand new paint bottles. Magicians and card cheats can read the backs of unmarked cards by noticing tiny specks of dirt, printing registration variances, and edge scuffs that the rest of us are usually too honest/inattentive to perceive. There is also the practice of juicing, using lemon juice or some other clear substance to mark cards: too subtle for most to notice, but easy for the trained eye to see.

Subtle differences might be subliminally received, but not directly recognized. The color (or whatever) might still be indirectly perceived.

 

[AgProv]

I've got to admit I spent time in the hobby shop in front of racks of paint by maybe four different manufacturers, trying to match about four hundred different types of paint on offer with the hobby thing I've got in mind, assessing what the best hues would be for the task at hand. So yes, I was measuring and evaluating the ranges on offer and visualising how the possible candidates might look on the competed models. I wonder if this "activated" or sensitised the bits of my brain that deal with colour perception, like a warm-up before a gym workout....

for those wondering, the painting idea is for this sort of thing; Ancient Persian military figures. Apparently clashing combinations of primary colours plus purple for royal regiments featured a lot...

And this is the reason for that shade of lavender-purple which has to be an acquired taste. Especially in conjunction with primary yellow. I'm surprised the horses didn't need blinkers.

 

[brownmane]

This might have applied if brownmane had handled the bottles continually while painting models , but these were brand new from the shop and dropped straight into his pocket. I doubt that anyone could remember very tiny variations in the bottle mouldings from the short time in his hand. It would make a great fake paranormal conjuring trick though.

Wrong person. It's @AgProv who is experimenting with the paint bottles.

 

[PeteS]

Wrong person. It's @AgProv who is experimenting with the paint bottles.

It's me age yer know.