We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

We’d all agree that the worst part of being a baby is the color-blindness. Fact: cones don’t begin functioning until a baby is 4 months old, which means that the world before that time is sadly rainbow-free.

It follows that as a color-seeing grown-up human we should take full advantage of our abilities and surround ourselves with interesting hues. Take Pantone, for example— the company that calls itself “the global authority on color”— which started in 1962 as a manufacturer of color cards for cosmetics companies. When Pantone recently branched out into the world of everyday goods with a collection of mugs and espresso cups— each reproducing a classic hue like 3395 C SPEARMINT or 520 C GRAPE— it gave coffee-drinkers one more way to saturate their lives with bright hues. Yet another reason to be glad we’re not babies.

Fact: newborn babies can detect light and dark but cannot yet see all colors. It figures, sort of. A newborn’s eyes are about half the size of an adult’s eyes. They grow quickly during the first year of life and then slow down, continuing to grow until puberty.

It makes sense, then, that a DVD series aimed at very young children would work with a vocabulary of black-and-white shapes. Wee See is a series designed by parent/designer Rolyn Barthelman and scored by parent/musician Tim DeLaughter, frontman of Polyphonic Spree.

The first collection includes fourteen animations, each 2-4 minutes long and featuring geometric shapes popping up, disappearing, scooching around the screen, rotating and otherwise moving in mesmerizing patterns. Twinkly sounds of rain drops, typewriting keystrokes, strumming instruments and ticking clocks accompany the bold shapes as they perform their dances.

The feeling of watching Wee See––if we can compare it to anything––is akin to that of being inside a planetarium. The DVDs invoke the same sense of wonder and visual splendor, and also induce the sort of hypnotized tranquility that an hour looking at faux stars produces. It’s not a bad feeling for babies to experience, nor, for that matter, adults.