Goethe Month: Theory of Colours, Day 4 — Reciprocal evocation, or, Goethe’s color wheel

The colours are here arranged in a general way according to the natural order, and the arrangement will be found to be directly applicable in the present case, for the colours diametrically opposed to each other in this diagram are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.

Thus, yellow demands purple; orange, blue; red, green; and vice versa: thus again all intermediate gradations reciprocally evoke each other; the simpler colour demanding the compound, and vice versa.

The cases here under consideration occur oftener than we are aware in ordinary life; indeed, an attentive observer sees these appearances everywhere.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre/Theory of Colours, 1810 transl. Charles Eastlake. John Murray Publishing: 1840. pp. 20-22)

Talk nerdy to me: Inaugural edition feat. Legos, Stormtroopers’ Picnic, and Sesame Street

“1, 2, 3 — 4, 5, 6 — 7, 8, 9 — 10, 11, 12
Stormtroopers came to the Stormtroopers’ picnic…”

Photograph by Mark, aka smokebelch on the flickr.

The counting song “Ladybugs’ Picnic” was written and recorded in 1971 for the Childrens’ Television Workshop masterpiece Sesame Street. It was written by Bud Luckey with lyrics by Dan Hadley, and sung for the show by Muppeteers Richard Hunt (R.I.P., wonderful you) and Jerry Nelson. The first episode in which it aired was marked 0416 and appeared as Season 4, Episode 12. Original airdate December 11, 1972.

Though most of the Sesame Street content was usually filmed/animated at the same time in good-sized chunks in various studios after long brainstorming and writing sessions, individual segments could often languish on the shelf for awhile, until just the right spot in the exactly perfect episode was found for them. Such is the case in the gap between the writing of “Ladybugs’ Picnic” by Luckey and Hadley, its recording with vocal track by Jerry and Richard — you know them better as Waldorf and Statler, among the many characters they voice — and its eventual appearance almost two years later on the show.

I have much more to say about wonderful Richard Hunt a different day. That’s one that I won’t be forgetting.