There are websites dedicated to pictures of signs that have some serious grammar issues. They are always very entertaining and also make you worry about the place that our world is going. This picture at first glance be a prime candidate for one of those sites and yet context is everything.
I took this picture last April at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). This sign is placed in the cafeteria on one of those busing tables with the trash and recycling recepticles. I saw this sign and laughed at the ridiculousness of putting red in quotations. It seemed like such a bonehead thing to do. The trays are red, they are not sarcastically red or figuratively red, they are simply red.
Then as I began to think about it I realized that this was not actually some bonehead mistake but a completely appropriate use of quotation marks. What is color anyway? Well it is light waves interacting with the light receptors in your eyes and your brain interpreting the signals from those light receptors. Color is not a tangible thing.
I have often how there is no way to describe a color to someone who hasn't seen the color. Describing colors is always done in terms of color. I've often wondered if we all see the same color that we all identify as red. Perhaps what I see as red is someone elses blue. But because we teach colors by pointing to them and saying "This is red." there is no way to tell what the other person is seeing. We may all be seeing different colors and and all calling it red.
So I guess technically there is no such thing as a red tray. The tray is just a reflecting light that is interacting with our eyes and interpreted by our brains. Well played, OMSI cafeteria staff, well played.
No comments:
Post a Comment