There are some everyday situations in which Mason Suljic, 24, struggles. You can’t always read graphics, charts, or maps very well. The red wavy line that warns you of spelling mistakes looks different. Selecting colors or pencil clothes is always a gamble, as is trying to pick ripe fruit in the supermarket.
As about one in 12 men and one in 200 women, Suljic has red-green color blindness or, more accurately, a lack of color vision, which makes it difficult to distinguish between some shades and reduces the total number of colors that has. can see. Today, however, his vision is undergoing a temporary but radical transformation.
Inside the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, Suljic is testing a pair of vision-enhancing glasses that promise to help you see in a fuller range of colors. What was once a dull gray will be revealed as a blush pink. Details that were once too blurry to distinguish in a painting (individual earthen boards, sharpness around a rock) are brought into focus.
“The water and the necklace are completely different with the glasses on,” she tells Guardian Australia, inspecting an 1881 work by Nicholas Chevalier called South Sea Beauty, in which a woman reclines on a boat. Suljic calmly slides his glasses up and down his nose, comparing his view through and without the lenses. “The water looks very different: it becomes a cooler color but also more vibrant. The trees stand out more. Without the glasses, everything mixes.”
Paintings like this usually appear to Suljic in a range of muted tones, reducing the detail. But with the glasses on, the tones sharpen and stand out, and the objects become more defined. For someone who normally only sees 1% of the normal color gamut, this is a new experience.
The beauty of the South Sea from the Chau Chak Wing Museum by Nicholas Chevalier, as seen in color and by those with green-red vision impairment. Photo: Chau Chak Wing Museum
“It’s weird,” he laughs. When you’re used to seeing colors in a certain way, says Suljic, the sudden change can be awkward. “It’s a little easier to stick with what you know.”
He also wonders to what extent he can believe his own eyes.
“I’m not sure [the painting] It’s the “right” color that normal people see, but it’s different, “he says.” For me, grass is green, but I don’t know how anyone else sees that color. , I’m never sure. “
The Chau Chak Wing Museum recently became the first museum or gallery in Australia to offer color-correcting glasses to guests such as Suljic, which will be presented free of charge from April.
A visitor with EnChroma glasses at the Chau Chak Wing Museum. Photo: Louise M Cooper / University of Sydney
“I think that especially in cultural and artistic institutions, accessibility has to be key,” says Jane Thogersen, the museum’s curator. “[These glasses] allowing colorblind people to experience the museum and exhibits as planned. And it’s an easy way to do that. “
The glasses, which are created by an American company called Enchroma, are part of a growing wave of technological innovations aimed at improving the vision of people with color blindness. Recent years have seen small but significant advances, such as Apple allowing users to browse their iPhones with corrective color filters, or video games like Grand Theft Auto that introduce color-blind modes.
But not all highlanders will benefit from wearing glasses. Enchroma says his glasses are effective for eight out of 10 people with red-green color blindness, but they won’t work at all for those with less common blue-yellow color blindness or very rare total color blindness. The price could be another barrier: the glasses are sold at retail between 299 and 514 dollars per octopus, with different pairs needed for the interior and exterior.
It’s not like those reaction videos of people where they see something for the first time and start crying
Glasses are not a silver solution either: with the shadows, Suljic could not pass an online color blindness test known as Ishihara. Even with technology like this, Suljic is still unable to join NSW or Victorian police forces, which he has long hoped to do; currently, it also does not allow the job applications of those with color blindness to continue.
For Suljic walking around the museum, the glasses make a “pretty drastic” difference, but they don’t quite provoke an emotional response.
“Seeing the different colors is a massive change. It looks so much better,” he says. “But it’s not like those reaction videos of people where they see something for the first time and start crying.”
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Ultimately, however, he is happy that technology exists.
“Looking at the painting with the glasses on, it certainly brings art to a new light,” says Suljic. He will return his glasses and see the world again as always. But it is good to know that a fuller range of colors is possible, even if it seems a little strange.