Psychology Of Light

Feel like trash, you make me feel clean, I'm in the black, can't see or be seen. Baby, baby, baby...light my way.
Lyrics from ‘Ultraviolet’ by U2

‍”Write: A warrior of light values a child’s eyes because they are able to look at the world without bitterness. What is a warrior of light?
You already know that… He is someone capable of understanding the miracle of life, of fighting to the last for something he believes in… 
… And though no one thinks of themselves as a warrior of light, we all are.”
Extract from ‘Manual of the Warrior of Light’ by Paulo Coelho

I started work at my new job yesterday. The office is in Avalon, with a grand view down to the harbour from where I sit. It’s nice being able to see the daylight, the boats floating on the water, and the water itself – I’m all for technology but nothing can beat Mother Nature for sheer awe-inspiration (or moi at mangling the English language). I think it was Michael Crichton who compared the evolution of the animal eye to a hurricane blowing through a junkyard, and building a Boeing 747 from the scrap. What are the odds? Sometimes when I’m feeling especially indolent I like looking into the mirror, turning the light on and seeing my pupils contract. Kicks in life! But it is quite fascinating seeing them iris open, like portals in a spaceship in some kitschy Sci-Fi movie. Coming back to Avalon, I saw the most amazing bird strutting insolently outside my window there – purple head, orange beak, red feathers with splashes of blue, green and yellow. A veritable flying rainbow yet. Unfortunately I still don’t have a camera, though maybe its good sometimes to just enjoy the moment rather than grabbing for the camera to freeze frame it for posterity. Sometimes when life seems a bit overwhelming (and yes I have my moments of weakness) I like to stop and look around – clouds in the day sky, stars in the night sky, green trees, the amazing sunsets looking down from the Scientia towards Anzac Parade, people playing cricket at the Uni ground… I think the greatest part of life is being able to take joy from outside of one’s Self, the eyes being just one of the senses with which we make that joy part of ourselves. I don’t mean to wax eloquent when I should be talking about the more practical aspects of light, but sometimes when we try to dissect something and analyse it using The Scientific Method, we lose sight (pun unintended) of the overall picture. Life is self-organizing – deconstruct it and you’re left with dead bones (morbid!).

And that joy is free – the government doesn’t tax it (yet). So why do we shut ourselves from the Light, retreating into glass (opaque!) and other boxes, breathing canned air and staring into the unhealthy depths of our computer monitors? The excuse that it’s more comfortable just doesn’t ring true – I’m sure most of us would accept 27 degrees Inside temperature instead of 24 if it means we can actually look (and perhaps be!) Outside. And if as architects we can’t convince our clients of the experiential benefits of day lighting and fresh air, well, we can always resort to the Bottom Line – 

more day lighting = less artificial lighting = less greenhouse gas emission and more money!!!

Let’s see… OK this is how I’m going to structure this journal entry:

Light, colour and people’s (and combinations thereof) 
perception and health (speaking of choices)

The presents and future of sight
Light and space and life

Light – the part of the visible spectrum revealed by the Built (and the non-Built)

1. Daylight on the curved bastions defines the entrance into the fort, emphasized by the entrance itself being in shadow
2. Village house in Rajasthan – deep recesses to shade the interior, sills used for keeping objects, and daylight falling on the choola (wood stove) in the corner, around which the family has their meals together
3. Colonnaded corridor in Fathepur Sikri – patterns of light and shade define the transition space between inside and outside
4.Islamic jaali (trellis) – delicate tracery keeps the sunlight out, but lets in the wind (cooled over water ponds) and daylight (No air-conditioners?! The horror, the horror.)

East: Inside a building in the historical precinct of Fatehpur Sikri (India)– the raised platform in the centre is where the king would hold court, with courtiers sitting on the bridges and the king’s audience standing below. The entire space is lit by diffuse light filtering through the jaalis, with higher contrast daylight defining the entrance and larger windows at the upper level ‘spotlighting’ the king – hierarchical representation through light, and a subtle connection of the built with the cycles of nature.    

West: Somewhere in Greece – A more direct connection between the (semi) built and the cycles of nature, here daylight and the sea. This is probably because the temperate Mediterranean climate is not as harsh as the North Indian climate of Fatehpur Sikri. Bright colours reflect the sunlight and produce a character of light and built form that is a trademark of Greek settlements that hasn’t been copyrighted…yet.‍

Colour – the part of the visible spectrum revealed by the Eye and the Mind

Colour results not just from properties of light, but on how our photoreceptors receive the light, and on how our visual system processes these inputs. No one to one relationship here – similar spectral stimuli can appear differently coloured when viewed against different chromatic backgrounds (Dugar, 2003). It then becomes difficult to set down a standard theory of colour vision.  In terms of physical properties we have monochromatic, analogous, HSV, complementary, triadic, tetradic (etc) colour schemes. Obviously there’s too much here for the Stupid Architectural Designer (SAD) to go into technical descriptions, so I’ll look at more conveniently abstract and subjective ideas about how light and colour affects people. We associate colours with different emotions and character. Colours have different connotations for different cultures as well. 

First: These associations can be described either as universal or situational (Dmitrieva).
Universal associations are highly frequent and as a rule have no correspondence to personal experience  (sun = happy).
Situational associations are less frequent and connect to personal feelings and memories (my first car is green, the beautiful girl in the computer lab wore black yesterday…).

Second: abstract (red = anger) or concrete (red = blood).
Third: material (denoting objects e.g. red = apple), sensory (perceptual e.g. red = warm or red = bright, tactile and visual perceptions respectively) and emotional (red = passion) associations. 

Is red hot and blue cold? Well, it’s difficult to say. This question was raised in the class, and you would think the answer is pretty obvious – lava is red and ice is blue, stop sniffing glue, this is bad haiku. But then again, a candle flame is red (seems warm) on the edges and fades through the orange and yellow parts of the spectrum to blue (seems cool) at the centre. Now, the blue part is actually at 1400 degrees Celsius, and the red 800 degrees Celsius. So why are hot water taps marked red and cold water blue? It’s actually ‘right’ (or there’d be people suing the poor tap manufacturers left, right and centre) but isn’t ‘correct’. Go figure – a strange place this dirt ball is (Insane Clown Posse).

The colour wheel above is a ready reckoner to combining two or more colours in a scheme. The combinations could be of complementary colours (opposing colour diagonally opposite in the wheel) that contain both warm and cool tones, or analogous ones (neighbouring colours in the wheel) such as green, yellow and orange. Or you could mix both sets. Just don’t rely on the diagram on the right.

So in the interior images below (Home Layouts magazine), colours generate different moods and characters to the spaces. One: through the individual colours and two: the contrasts and interplays between different colours from the colour wheel. These descriptions from the magazine article say it all in typical interior decorator language (see clockwise from top left).

1. Cool Caribbean colours: A flamboyant man-made colour scheme – the pink door strikes a fine balance with the surrounding blues and greens.
2. The effect is dramatic but the mood is tranquil. A range of deep cool aquas is complemented by sizzling mustard yellow and touches of red in the bedspread.
3. Pink on earthy textures
4. and 5. A fresh approach to design full of exciting new shapes and colour combinations.
6.Lettuce green with neutral creamy white and delicate pastel cool look.

Red‍

Hue effect
Exciting (bright red); stimulating (red)
‍
Impressions and associations
Positive – passionate, fervid, active, strong, warm 
Negative – aggressive, raging, intense, fierce, bloody

Character
Red is perhaps the most dominant and dynamic of all colours. It grabs the attention and over-rules all other hues. The lens of the eye has to adjust to focus the red light wavelengths, their natural focal point lies behind the retina. Thus, red advances, creating the illusion that red objects are closer than they are.

Symbolically
Red means fire, life and strength, but its aggressive masculine nature is also linked with combat, dominance, war and rebellion. The dynamic nature changes dramatically where the colour turns pink. It changes its gender to feminine and appears gentle and acquiescent.

Orange

Hue effect
Exciting (bright orange); stimulating (orange); cheerful (light orange)

Impressions and associations
Positive – jovial, lively, energetic, extroverted, sociable 
Negative – intrusive, blustering (if colour is highly saturated)

Character
Orange is mellower and less primitive than red. It has virtually no negative cultural or emotional associations. Aesthetically, though, desaturated hues may appear cheap and without vigour.

Yellow

Hue effect
Cheering

Impressions and associations
Positive – sunny, cheerful, radiant, vital, high-spirited 
Negative – Egocentric, glaring

Character
In pure form, yellow is the happiest of all colours. It radiates warmth, cheerfulness, and inspiration. Yellow is a comparatively light colour, as it loses its lightness when modified it ceases to be yellow. 

Symbolically
Yellow signifies enlightenment (mental and spiritual), expansion, sunlight and communication.

Green

Hue Effect
Retiring (light green), relaxing (green)

Impressions and associations
Positive – tranquil, refreshing, quiet, natural 
Negative – tiresome, guilty

Character
Psychologically, green represents a withdrawal from stimulus. Since the lens of the eye focuses green light exactly on the retina, it is also the most restful colour to the eye.

Symbolically
In the case of green it has contradictory symbolic value and image, representing both the power of nature and life but also the colour of mould, decay and sickness in humans.

Blue

Hue Effect
Retiring (light blue); relaxing (blue)

Impressions and associations
Positive – calm, secure, comfortable, sober, contemplative 
Negative – frightening, depressing, melancholy, cold

Character
In all aspects, blue is the antithesis of red. In its appearance, blue is transparent and wet; red is opaque and dry. Psychologically, the cool and relating nature of blue is in direct opposition to the warmth and excitement of red. While red seems vulgar at times, blue exhibits a noble character. In its action upon the human organism, blue will decrease blood pressure and pulse rate while red will have the opposite effect (followed by a reversal in both cases after a period of time).

Purple

Hue Effect
Subduing

Impressions and associations
Positive – dignified, exclusive 
Negative – Lonely, mournful, pompous, conceited

Character
Purple is a blend of red and blue, the two colours that are physically and psychologically most opposed. In its various tones, purple may evoke delicacy and richness or appear unsettling and degenerate.

People – the part whose well-being is influenced by visible and invisible parts of the light spectrum

Light and colour – what implications do they have on architecture? What we design is ultimately about the people who are going to inhabit the space. I’ve noticed (and I’m guilty of this myself) that often our design presentations show the Architecture uninhabited – beautiful walls scything through the landscape, backlit by a conveniently positioned virtual sun… but nary a person in sight. But human beings and other animals are going to inhabit that pristine picture, modifying it and reacting to it. If they are happy and healthy in it, they will take care of my Masterpiece; if they aren’t, then they won’t.

Humans are animals, much as we would like to pretend otherwise. Our biological selves are governed by circadian rhythms, dependent on sunlight and daylight for efficient functioning. So, a person is going to be happy and healthy if the design of the space he or she inhabits allows an adequate quota of UV radiation. Daylight suppresses the production of the hormone melatonin by the pineal gland, but if the amount of daylight isn’t sufficient pineal activity continues, and we continue through the day not as wide-awake as we ought to be. This causes SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) syndrome in people, symptoms of which include:

• a desire to oversleep and difficulty staying awake, but in some cases, disturbed sleep and early morning wakening; 
• feeling fatigue and an inability to carry out normal routine; 
• a craving for carbohydrates and sweet foods, usually resulting in weight gain; 
• feelings of misery, guilt and loss of self-esteem, sometimes hopelessness and despair, sometimes apathy and loss of feelings; 
• an irritability and desire to avoid social contact; 
• a tension and inability to tolerate stress; 
• a decreased interest in sex and physical contact 
• and in some sufferers, extremes of mood and short periods of hypomania (overactivity) in spring and autumn

Source: www.nosad.org

Which means our buildings have to let in the right amounts of the right kind of natural lighting. Proper interior day lighting (ID65) is considered more pleasant than artificial lighting, allows adequate visual acuity, and is more efficient ecologically and economically. However, it isn’t quite enough, so we also need to supplement it with the right amount of the right kind of artificial lighting.

http://www.healthylight.de/arti.html

In the meantime, most lighting engineers and ergonomists have forgotten about the benefits of daylight and treat it generally as cause of trouble (glare, reflections, heat gain etc.)… Even those 500 lx required for cellular offices are not based on visual performance because a level of approximately 100 lx is sufficient for most office tasks as the research conducted in 1961 by Bodman had shown. His reason for requiring higher illuminance levels than 100 lx was “having a bright and exciting environment”. Lighting engineers readily accepted the number (about 500 lx) but soon forgot the rationale. Offices without daylight can look bright at much lower levels since brightness is not a physical measure like luminance or illuminance but mainly a result of luminance ratios.

We assume that non-visual effects of lighting play an important role in the impact of artificial lighting on health impairments in accordance to Hollwich, a professor of ophthalmology in Germany, who claimed in the 60s that time-constant lighting with fluorescent lamps would disturb the circadian rhythm of the human body. His proposals were aimed to mimicking the spectrum of the daylight on the one hand and its timely change on the other.

One of the findings of Hollwich is closely related to S.A.D, the seasonal affective disorder. This mental and physiological disorder (e.g. depression, anxious moods, decreased energy) is mainly caused by the lack of light and occurs in the transition period from summer to the dark period of the year. The differences of prevalence in different countries, e.g. Italy compared with Sweden, supported the theory that the effects were caused by the amount of light. This conclusion is backed by the fact that simple phototherapy has been effective in relieving SAD.

…that lack of light during the work hours is one of the most important causes for the negative impact of artificial lighting at the workplace as well as the main cause for the acceptance of two-component lighting. The rational behind our finding is that any artificial lighting system with some negative effects on persons or work (e.g. direct glare, poor visibility, unpleasant colour) will be avoided by the users as long as they possibly can. This means, they never switch on the artificial lighting as long as they manage to perform their visual tasks regardless of the physiological effort they have to make. The result is a visual environment too dark for most of the day hours and, in addition, a very high activation of physiological resources. Well accepted lighting systems, on the other hand, are readily used, and thus generate brightness for a comparably longer period of the working day. This theory would support the idea that just mimicking the brightness of the day would be sufficient.

“We want plenty of windows and full spectrum lighting - not those cold fluorescents.” (Fielding)

The effects of light and colour on human psychology has been documented in studies such as those by Ott (student hyperactivity), Romm and Brown (increasing productivity through energy-efficient design), and Kuller & Lindsten (school children and daylight), among others. These studies indicate that

using full-spectrum radiation lamps to provide an amount of light (natural and artificial) equivalent to the ideal human requirement led to less hyperactivity in school students, increased productivity in office and industrial buildings, and generally to a feeling of well-being.

Daylight has long been the standard measure for lighting quality. Studies by Kuller and Lindsten (1992), and the Heschong Mahone Group (1999), demonstrate a positive correlation between day lighting and academic performance. Daylight gives off a continuous spectrum of all light wavelengths, including blue, red and green, appearing as a bright white. Daylight is the standard for colour quality in lighting, with a Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of 100. In contrast, fluorescent lamps give off a discontinuous spectrum - a flickering light, with colour spikes. Most fluorescent lamps operate at 3,000 K (warmer) to 4,100 K (cooler), with a CRI from the low 50’s to 86.

The movement towards learning spaces developed for notebook computers allows for tremendous flexibility in the configuration of teams and individual learner stations. This flexibility can pose a challenge in lighting design. Ideally, light from an overhead source will be directed from a learner’s right or left, minimizing glare or “veiling reflections.” Light directed from the front or behind can reflect off of computer screens or glossy pages into the learner’s eyes, causing eyestrain. In a flexible environment, where team and individual seating arrangements change often, a directional light source produces poor results. One popular solution is to provide indirect lighting, with most of the light reflected off of the ceiling from pendant-mounted fixtures. Indirect lighting, while uniform, can also be monotonous, lacking shadow and contrast.

Light from the sun is polarized by the atmosphere, resulting in reduced glare and the blue colour of the sky. Polarizing lenses are available to filter fluorescent lamps. …combined with full spectrum lamps can achieve artificial illumination with the spectral energy distribution and light polarization characteristics of natural daylight. “The lighting has been found to match natural daylight… There is none of the eyestrain and fatigue typical of conventional cool-white illumination.” (Karpen, 1991)

Perception 

My friend Amardeep is in Germany studying lighting design. He recently sent me a copy of his thesis on developing a matrix for deriving lighting design from music, and an article on a project his office worked on. I think that even though these talk more about ‘hardcore’ lighting design while we are more interested in the effects of invisiblelight on human beings, there are some valuable lessons to be learned about how lighting affects human perception and health. For instance, he writes that the visual system is stimulated more by local variations in light than by the overall illumination – brightness and contrast, hues, variable hues, the ability to vary hues... So:

 High contrast colours and brightness/lightness ratios cause after-images and displeasing ‘vibrations’ in visual perceptions
 Colour causes the necessary ‘visual vibrations’ in the eye and is therefore one of the prominent parameters that must be considered for the formulation of the light chord
 It is not the overall brightness but the difference in ratios of brightness and lightness must be considered as the ‘half-steps’ in the light chord
 The ratios between brightness and lightness has to be at a certain acceptable level to be visually pleasing
 Human visual information depends primarily on edges and boundaries, which in-turn define the overall form of the space
 Form, therefore defines the ‘visual performance’ and can be termed as the first element of ALD (from Dugar)

and health: Edited text from ‘Effects of individualized light and colour design at the workplace’ (key words in bold)

Project: Berlin Medical Society building
Team: Michael F. Rohde, Thomas Braedikow, Dr. Michael Essers, Karolina M. Zielinska, Christine Pesch, Amardeep M. Dugar

Homo sapiens are phototropic in relation to the complete light spectrum… on the time of the day, factors like changing seasons, cloud movement and the course of the sun. Based on these cognitive theories research has shown that the value of light, luminous colour, and the colour rendering index have a considerable impact on the mood, motivation and physical well being of the employees. The idea was to give the user the option to modify according to individual preference the luminous colour in his space from the full spectrum of light. By applying additive colour mixing, which is possible with a specially designed RGB luminaire, every individual is able to choose the primary and subsequent mixtures of colours in the indirect component of the luminaire.

Based on the Chakra colour theory, a colour from the rainbow is present in each of the cells. During their research in 1975 the scientific team headed by Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp discovered facts about the light in our cells… still questioned today, but biophysicists use the term "bio-photonic radiation" to describe the fact that human bodies possess measurable "internal light". Pranic healing is a system of energy-based healing techniques that utilizes "prana" to balance, harmonize and transform the body’s energy processes. 'Prana' is the Sanskrit word for 'life-force'. This invisible bio-energy keeps the body alive and maintains a state of good health. Pranic healing works on the principle that the healing process is accelerated by increasing the life force or vital energy on the affected part of the physical body. They have documented that not only heart-circulation parameters, vegetative functions of the body, skin diseases and bone metabolism, but also mental and psychological existential orientations can be positively affected through adequate exposure to light. For instance, it has been proven that by accentuating the red end of the light spectrum at a workplace it is possible to increase a person’s pulse and breathing rate, and by accentuating the short wave of the spectrum, i.e. the blue end, the reverse effect is invoked. Medical findings in the field of endocrinology and ophthalmology have documented that colour-related psychological phenomena have a physiological correlation… the retinal receptor for the colour blue triggers melatonin distribution in the pineal gland, with the ensuing effect of sleepiness on human beings. The concept of "Spectro-Chrome Colour Therapy" involves the irradiation of large areas of the human skin with coloured light… has been used for the therapy of chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, bronchitis, stress and sleep disorders. The earth produces a frequency of 194.71 Hz…if one wishes to make the earth tone 'visible', the octave needs to be raised by forty times (240) to reach a frequency of 428,000,000 Hz, specified by physicists as 700nm, equal to the colour bright orange. By adding another octave to this, one can resonate with the frequency of human DNA. The orange-red light thus resonates with the frequency of human DNA and the earth tone and hence results in a balance in human existence on earth. (I didn’t get this, but I like the conclusion itself – a connection with the earth, coincidental or otherwise is what we need to understand).

The presents and future of sight

Light is fascinating… ‘and get ready cuz this ****'s about to get heavy’ (Eminem)

When directed at a narrow slit in a screen, a light beam does not form a silhouette of the slit on a screen behind – it disperses into an intricate pattern of brightness and shadow. If there are two identical slits next to each other instead of one, the resulting pattern is not a doubling of the first pattern, but a radically different one – sometimes with more darkness than light, which seems counter-intuitive. Conventional physics attributes these results to interference between the light “waves”. However, if the experiment is repeated with one photon (instead of the trillions in a beam of light), we get the same pattern as the first one. “Something is still deflecting that solitary photon from its path in a way that depends on what other slits, of what shapes, are open…further experiments show that the entities that are doing the interfering behave exactly like photons – except that they are invisible.” So these shadow photons cannot be seen, except by the effect they have on visible photons in our universe – the phrase “our universe” coming from the deduction that the existence of these non-existent photons can only be explained by saying there are other universes parallel to the one we thought unique. These parallel universes differ from each other vis-à-vis slight changes in positions of their constituents particles – so as you read this your parallel universe counterparts are reading as well, with variations. ‘Some have moved on to the next photograph; others are studying the illustrations; some have paused for a cup of tea; a few have thrown the article down in disbelief.’ (David Deutsch)

Which is a lot to deduce from a beam of light, but what the hey.

So those are our presents – what does the future hold in store for sight? Richard Alan Normann is developing “artificial eyes” – vision hardware that “will consist of a miniature video camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses, signal processing electronics, a transdermal connector to pass across the skin, and an array of microelectrodes permanently implanted in the visual cortex.” Tom Furness has developed the VRD (Visual Retinal Display), a device that projects images directly onto the retina. He says “we might be able to give people a sort of hypervision… like creating bionic eyes.” Using technology to give sight to the vision-impaired, and the possibility of “seeing” higher dimensions of light and space perhaps?‍

Light and space and life

References‍

Branwyn G. ‘The Desire to be Wired’. 
Dugar, A. ‘Development of a syntactic technique for Architectural Lighting Design derived from musical principles’
Fielding, R., ‘Lighting the Learning Environment’
Rohde, Braedikow, Essers, Zielinska, Dugar. ‘Effects of individualised light and colour design at the workplace.’
TIME Magazine: The Age of Discovery. January 1998 issue