Pink for a girl, blue for a boy. Hey, so once upon a time it was the other way round, right? That’s what they say. Was it really?
Alex Mitchell deep dives into colour in #feministfriday episode 375 and digs out actual references. Fascinating. Read it.
SPOILER, the association was ambiguous in 1923: There seems to be considerable support of each colour for girl babies and each for boy babies (from the Altoona Tribune.)
…and honestly it is pleasing that there was no agreed-upon association, historically, versus there being gendered colours any which way.
2.
Elise Blanchard at Mozilla provides a history of links in hypertext applications, such as the web itself:
Why are hyperlinks blue?
(Or at least: that’s the default colour set by web browsers, before websites add their own style.)
Here’s the moment for browsers: April 12, 1993 – Mosaic Version 0.13, from the release notes:
Changed default anchor representations: blue and single solid underline for unvisited, dark purple and single dashed underline for visited.
And then a follow-up from Blanchard: Revisiting why hyperlinks are blue.
…which digs even further back into hypertext research:
Ben Shneiderman developed the highlighted selectable light blue link, which was implemented by graduate student Dan Ostroff. In doing so, they, as well as other students, tested many versions in controlled experiments.
“Red highlighting made the links more visible, but reduced the user’s capacity to read and retain the content of the text… blue was visible, on both white and black backgrounds and didn’t interfere with retention,” Shneiderman shared with me.
I love that the testing is cognitive: blue is good for reading and retaining.
BUT, I would want to push even further back. Why does blue make sense for hyperlinks?
I’ve talked about this before(2005): blue is the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel; it’s the colour of the open sky. It’s the colour of potential.
So of course the hyperlink, a leap into the unknown, should be blue.
ALSO:
I love that hyperlinks, by default, go purple if you’ve previously visited the linked webpage. It maps onto the cognitive sense of “recognition” that we often (but not always) automatically feel when we see a person that we’ve talked to before.
What would it mean to see purple auras when you glimpse a person you’ve talked with previously? How many familiar strangers would you pass on the street that otherwise you wouldn’t notice? An app for future augmented reality smart glasses perhaps…
3.
Why do police cars and ambulances have flashing blue lights?
The use of the blue emergency light originates in Germany during World War II. As a result of the ‘Verdunkelung’, a black-out measure for aerial defense from 1935, cobalt blue was regulated to replace the red color used until 1938 in emergency vehicle lights. Due to the scattering properties of the blue color, it is only visible to lower altitudes and is therefore less easily spotted by enemy airplanes.
4.
Blue Monday by New Order was released in 1983. It is the best-selling 12” single of all time (Wikipedia) and was composed on a prototype-level homebrew “step-time” sequencer in binary code.
Synthesisers had been around for a while, but this track absolutely busted open the potential of the instrument and bridged us into dance music.
AND SO…
Watch this: Orkestra Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments(YouTube).
(The elapsed time between Blue Monday till now being almost as long as the 1930s to Blue Monday, which is… alarming.)
I don’t know about you, but that video reminds me just how WEIRD electronic music really is.
All those repetitive beats!
In particular: popular music didn’t sound like Blue Monday when those instruments were around.
Why not? It could have been done, per the video.
Is it that music emerges from cultural templates? Was electronic music in the 1980s, with its looping sequences and transcendent states a cultural anticipation of the upcoming Information Age, all streams of binary signals and virtual realities, some kind of Jungian synchronicity with the world at large?
I don’t think so. We could make the same argument for the 1930s, had Blue Monday emerged then, the beats representating peak industrialisation and the drumbeat of impending war; the psychological effects of the music reflecting the hedonistic escapism of the time.
Instead perhaps music is an exploratory probe, each track a scout through the dynamic space of possibility suggested by the instrument as a specific thing. Blue Monday as a natural unfolding of the synthesiser itself.
So to invent entirely new music, invent new instruments?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here’s the link. Thanks, —Matt.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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1.
Pink for a girl, blue for a boy. Hey, so once upon a time it was the other way round, right? That’s what they say. Was it really?
Alex Mitchell deep dives into colour in #feministfriday episode 375 and digs out actual references. Fascinating. Read it.
SPOILER, the association was ambiguous in 1923: (from the Altoona Tribune.)
…and honestly it is pleasing that there was no agreed-upon association, historically, versus there being gendered colours any which way.
2.
Elise Blanchard at Mozilla provides a history of links in hypertext applications, such as the web itself:
Why are hyperlinks blue?
(Or at least: that’s the default colour set by web browsers, before websites add their own style.)
Here’s the moment for browsers: from the release notes:
And then a follow-up from Blanchard: Revisiting why hyperlinks are blue.
…which digs even further back into hypertext research:
I love that the testing is cognitive: blue is good for reading and retaining.
BUT, I would want to push even further back. Why does blue make sense for hyperlinks?
I’ve talked about this before (2005): blue is the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel; it’s the colour of the open sky. It’s the colour of potential.
So of course the hyperlink, a leap into the unknown, should be blue.
ALSO:
I love that hyperlinks, by default, go purple if you’ve previously visited the linked webpage. It maps onto the cognitive sense of “recognition” that we often (but not always) automatically feel when we see a person that we’ve talked to before.
What would it mean to see purple auras when you glimpse a person you’ve talked with previously? How many familiar strangers would you pass on the street that otherwise you wouldn’t notice? An app for future augmented reality smart glasses perhaps…
3.
Why do police cars and ambulances have flashing blue lights?
4.
Blue Monday by New Order was released in 1983. It is the best-selling 12” single of all time (Wikipedia) and
Synthesisers had been around for a while, but this track absolutely busted open the potential of the instrument and bridged us into dance music.
AND SO…
Watch this: Orkestra Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments (YouTube).
(The elapsed time between Blue Monday till now being almost as long as the 1930s to Blue Monday, which is… alarming.)
I don’t know about you, but that video reminds me just how WEIRD electronic music really is.
All those repetitive beats!
In particular: popular music didn’t sound like Blue Monday when those instruments were around.
Why not? It could have been done, per the video.
Is it that music emerges from cultural templates? Was electronic music in the 1980s, with its looping sequences and transcendent states a cultural anticipation of the upcoming Information Age, all streams of binary signals and virtual realities, some kind of Jungian synchronicity with the world at large?
I don’t think so. We could make the same argument for the 1930s, had Blue Monday emerged then, the beats representating peak industrialisation and the drumbeat of impending war; the psychological effects of the music reflecting the hedonistic escapism of the time.
Instead perhaps music is an exploratory probe, each track a scout through the dynamic space of possibility suggested by the instrument as a specific thing. Blue Monday as a natural unfolding of the synthesiser itself.
So to invent entirely new music, invent new instruments?