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The dress became viral 10 years ago and taught us the science of color

The dress became viral 10 years ago and taught us the science of color

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At the end of February 2015, the Internet seemed to be a easier place. Tumblr was still popular, Twitter was still Twitter and “viral” was an ubiquitous experience. And nothing this year became more viral than the notorious, argumentationally, internet dividing, constantly broadcast mystery of “The Kleid”.

It started with a wedding. When Grace Bleasdale and Keir Johnston prepared for their Scotland wedding, the bride's mother, Cecilia Bleasdale, wrote a picture of the dress and said that she had planned to wear it at the celebrations.

When Grace and her mother could not agree on the color of the dress, the degrees posted it Facebook and a friend later shared the then popular blogging site Tumblr and asked the audience to contain: see a blue and black dress or a white and golden one?

The debate was then carried out in a survey by Buzzfeed Community Manager Cates Holderness, where they saw more than 16 million people. Big names like Ellen Degeneres began to weigh themselves. Then it blew in the air.

A decade later, an argument will still be made if you ask the notorious question: blue, black or white and gold? In the USA Today Newsroom only this week it has certainly been made.

But the dress was more than just a viral phenomenon – it was a blessing for science. And if you have participated in the dining table via a tweet, a click on a survey or an argument, you have probably contributed a small way to the further development of our understanding of color perception as we know it.

Sorry white and golden people, “the dress” is actually blue and black

There is a final answer to the color question. The retailer of the dress, Roman originals, confirmed that the dress is blue and black in reality and tweeted on February 27, 2015: “We can confirm that #dedress is blue and black! We should know!”

The brand that had difficulty keeping the dress in store according to the viral stock later created a special, unique white and gold version to sell it during a charity auction that will benefit Comic Relief, a British organization that fought poverty.

The clothing dealer, who is now only called a novel, has not forgotten his claim to fame. On the website, an entire website was made for the 10th anniversary, on which the official virality date on February 26, 2015 is listed. According to the brand, #dressgate exhibited 7.6 million tweets, some of which came from celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian.

The brand also said that internet users looked at the dress on all social media platforms 73 million times, which resulted in the website was sold out in just 34 minutes. Maybe surprisingly, 70% of the people who posted the dress saw it initially as gold and knows, not as true blue and black, according to Roman.

“A decade ago, the dress broke out of the Internet, solved debates at dinner and changed the way we see colors – literally!” Michele Bastock, Roman's fire director, said today in a statement to USA. “As the original retailer of the viral sensation, we are still impressed by how a dress fascinated the world. Regardless of whether you have seen blue and black or white and gold, one thing is certain: #dedresse remains a symbol. Here are 10 years of visual illusions, internet magic and unforgettable moments! “

From internet phenomena to scientific blessing

If someone tries to tell them that it is a waste of time to keep up with the Internet trends, they say that they may only miss the next scientific breakthrough.

The neuroscientific Bevil Conway, Senior Investigator at the National Eye Institute, part of the US National Institute of Health, was one of the first members of the scientific community to give an insight into the “Why” behind the illusion. In the meantime, he said, scientists had found a lot about how our brain perceives the color – and the dress is of central importance for this development.

“The dress was extremely revealing for science, the scientific understanding of how color works,” he told USA. “It really taught us that the brain contributes a lot of the heavy lifting to interpret the light that comes into the eye and tell us what color it has (we see).”

When the dress became viral for the first time, Conway was flooded after an interview with media inquiries. When he spoke to Adam Rogers of Wired from Wired, the phenomena did not have to deal with his eyes, but with the brain.

“At first it was hotly controversial and discussed,” he said.

Since then, however, a broad scientific evidence of the topic has emerged. Papers have been published and the scientific community is now largely agreed with an explanation.

“A consensus is that what you see, what you see depends on assumptions that your brain automatically makes about the color of the light,” he said. “Well, this is (the) consensus. People believe that this is the explanation for the dress – how the brain assumes the lighting. It's not about rods and taps, it is not about whether they are color blind or not, it is not about something in the eye apple. It's the brain.”

As they move through the world, the light source that penetrates into their eyes varies in color, such as looking at a cool blue sky or a warm direct sunlight. Your brain leads the color correction to ensure that what you see is stable in color, even if you look at the world under different types of light.

If your brain does not have all the information it needs, it fills out the gaps.

“This special picture (of the dress) does not have enough information in the picture itself to tell you what the color of the light is. So you have to rely on assumptions that make your brain,” said Conway. “Some people assume that the color is warm, so subtract from the dress and see blue and black, but some people assume that the light is colored cool, more blue sky, so subtract the blue color.”

There is not enough evidence to tell us exactly why some brains are more of a assumption about the other, although Conway has theorized that this could be connected to the spread of waking times under light such as the blue sky and incandescent lamp lighting.

The script has come up with what colors most people see

Information and exposure also play a role in what you see and explain why more people see the dress in the other way over time.

When the dress came out for the first time, the separation was about 50/50 for blue and black compared to white and gold, said Conway. Now, 10 years later, the fact that the garment is black and blue in reality has become generally known, which has effectively changed the majority of people, as the once -harvested picture perceives.

“Most people now know that the actual dress is blue and black, so that knowledge has changed the picture as they see the picture,” said Conway. “So in real time we experienced the influence of knowledge on color perception in our lifetime.”

A viral moment helped to answer an ancient question

If you see the dress in a way, it doesn't mean that you cannot change your opinion, explained Conway. Many people can “turn” as they perceive the dress so that they can see both colors. This is because the picture is from the famous illusion of Rubin Vase.

Rubin's vase is more colloquial than the optical vase face iroverication and can be seen as black profiles of two faces who consider each other or as a white vase, but not both at the same time. Sometimes the colors are switched, but the premise is the same: they see either faces or a vase.

Depending on which part of the image you focus on, most people can see between one or the other. Other famous examples of this are the Duck-Rabbit illusion (sometimes referred to as rabbit duck or Jaastrow Duck-Rabbit) or Necker-Cub. As with the dress, it was accepted when this and similar illusions came out for the first time that every person's perception was determined so that they could only see it in one way or another.

“It was found that with practice and encouragement and persistent tour, we can turn almost everyone over that we have now seen,” said Conway. “We have data from which the proportion of people who can turn around has increased over time.”

The dress was so consistent for our understanding of the science of color perception that it was proof that a question answered out of the way back to great philosophers Immanuel Kant, who in the 18th century people can never really know whether they can see color in the same way as they cannot see the eyes of another.

As it turns out, we know this answer, even without being able to crawl into the heads of the other, especially because we have developed a language that is advanced and instructive enough so that we can effectively communicate our experiences with each other.

“The dress is the most powerful example that we see all the color very similar, because if it fails we do not see the color-it will make it an almighty viral color fiasco like this,” said Conway. “In most circumstances, we see it pretty well in seeing it the same way.”

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