Colour People Interview
"...on Goethe's side through and through".
After studying architecture in Weimar, Eckhard Bendin first worked as an architect and artist, then managed an office for architecture-related art in Erfurt. In 1983, he received a lectureship at the Faculty of Architecture at the TU Dresden and worked at the Institute for Fundamentals of Design and Representation there as a private lecturer for design theory until his retirement in 2006.
In this capacity, he experienced and helped shape GDR times, Wende times and post-transition times, and he did so in an unusually liberal way.
Bendin could be described as a modern-day advocate of Goethe's colour theory (he prefers the term "colour science"). Like him, he calls for a close link between art and science and an interdisciplinary orientation of colour theory, with today's knowledge and possibilities. This is also the point of contact with the idea of free colour.
Bendin receives the interviewer in the teaching and research collection on colour theory that he has built up at the TU Dresden. It is an appropriate place, since it offers the literature from which Bendin can quote large parts within walking distance. Despite his age, which has long since begun with a 7, he is an interlocutor with lightning-fast associations who quotes the names and theories of colour theory like no other.
Questions for Eckhard Bendin
Do you have a favourite colour, Mr Bendin, and if so why?
This is the violet-blue of the Usambara violet. This colour has such a velvety quality. Ultramarine, on the other hand, is still too neutral, it has to become much more reddish to get under the skin like this. It has something absorbing, yearning. That's how I imagine the colour of romance.
Where do you see your interface with freecolour?
It is, for example, the research on historical colour circles that I had access to. These were both painted original spreads of designs and printed circles in full colour quality. According to Ostwald's definition, the body colours of maximum saturation should be realised in a cyclic order. It has emerged through discourses with colleagues as well as from writings, e.g. on Gestalt psychology or combinatorics and harmonics, that the colour circles show what role the question of conciseness has, as well as the harmonic position of the colour tones in the circle.
In this respect, I was pleased that the question of harmony is addressed in your software. The problem of colour harmony plays a big role in design. But I don't like the concept of harmony in colours. It denotes the excellent situation that everything is in harmony. Everyone who deals with music knows that dissonance is just as important as consonance, it depends on the structure of the whole. I am interested in the structural fabric of diversity.
How did you get into colour?
I actually wanted to study music, where harmonics is an essential part of the training. Maybe I could have also become a composer or arranger, where it's also about the whole thing. But I went into architecture. Perhaps it was a substitute performance that the question of harmony also interested me strongly here. During my studies, I already drifted into the artistic-aesthetic field and later taught design. I was aware that the sensual area is underrepresented at almost every university, apart from some art or design schools, but even there it is often misunderstood that the question of form is not seen as a quality in its own right.
In the Bauhaus films that were recently shown on television, you can see how the concept of functionalism and technical progress have overlaid everything. The sensual was no longer regarded as a function. In my education, too, there was mostly a separation between content and form. But it was clear to me that form cannot be separated from content, just as mind and body are inseparably linked in many ways and on many levels. That is why I have always felt that it is important to get confirmation for design concerns from other disciplines.
For example, from the psychology of perception: there was, for example, analogy research in the 1920s and 1930s, where the correlation of different sensory performances was investigated. Most of us are gifted associatively, only a few as synaesthetes. However, there are also phylogenetically acquired, libidinal dispositions that bring together our perception of colours, shapes, smells and so on. In synaesthesia research, we speak of 'intersensory dimensions' of perception such as brightness, intensity and density. It is still a mystery today how it really works. It has been researched on primates, for example, how closely form and colour vision are coupled with each other, and that presumably not only different things take place in different brain areas.
The need for a transdisciplinary approach also led to the founding of the Dresden Colour Forum. This opened up opportunities to communicate with experts from very different fields. The Colour Theory Collection is also an organically grown consequence of the efforts to combine traditional knowledge and experience at university level and to make them fruitful.
What was the GDR period of colour teaching like?
I came here in 1983. At the big Dresden conferences in the 60s and 70s, East and West and Europe were still together, but there was already a lack of regular exchange with colleagues. Many efforts were isolated and parallel, e.g. on standardisation in East and West. While Manfred Richter, a native of Dresden, was working on the colour chart DIN 6164 at BAM in West Berlin, Manfred Adam, a former Ostwald assistant, was developing the colour chart DIN 6164 in Großbothen/b. Leipzig, in collaboration with Gerhard Zeugner, developed the colour chart TGL 21 579, as well as corresponding visual aids for school lessons. In the 1980s, efforts were also made to publish a new edition of the legendary Baumann-Prase colour chart based on colourimetry. However, the economic upheaval after the political change thwarted this.
One of the unique selling points of the Dresden Colour Theory Collection is that it unites the various colour-scientific achievements before, during and after the separation of East and West. It illustrates how important and necessary united efforts would be. After the fall of the Wall, extended contacts were also established with Swiss colleagues, e.g. with regard to historical interfaces in the interaction of scientists and artists, such as Wilhelm Ostwald, Aemilius Müller, Hans Hinterreiter or Jakob Weder.
What do you think about free colour?
It is gratifying for me, who have dealt a lot with the history of colour theory, to see that one thinks beyond the limitations, that one also has the user in mind, who has to come to terms with the complexity of the parallel developments. The diversity of successive efforts forces us to take a generalised view of things. Concerning CIELAB, I have come to the conclusion that for scientific comparisons, one has to move to a neutral basis in order to become comprehensible.
We have a clear concern: human beings should be free, thoughts should be free, colour should be free - why do we go through the stress of usage rights and the withdrawal of certain hues from certain commercial areas? The second side is: there are better possibilities than the commercial systems, they are in every computer. We are interdisciplinary, we don't only work within the printing areas.
Today I can only guess how fundamental your work actually is. There is, after all, a difference between screen perception and everyday perception. I assumed that the eye adapts very finely to the respective circumstances. In my investigations, like Ostwald, I started from body colours and matt colour tone collections. Of course, it is challenging and fantastic what can be done on the computer today. However, as a contemporary still from the analogue world, I would certainly have to take tutoring from you....
It is not witchcraft to calculate colour correctly for different output situations, the algorithms are available in every computer ex works.
I am very glad that such an effort exists, if it had existed 20 years ago, I probably would have been spared some trouble back then. At the turn of the millennium, I used my colourimeter to examine the structure of 62 colour tone circles. This included various approaches to structuring, e.g. conciseness investigations and investigations into the law of circles as well as 'complication' according to Viktor Goldschmidt. They aimed at isogonal colour grading - similar to what you offer in your software. Unfortunately, I was not able to complete the evaluating calculations at that time and they would have to be continued with today's technical possibilities.
What do you think of Goethe's colour theory?
I am on Goethe's side through and through. In recent years, it has increasingly come about that people have a different view of Goethe. Goethe understood light and colour phenomenologically. The Newtonian reduction was suspect to him, his theory of colour was also conceived as a fundamental critique of science. For scientific work, for example, Goethe also included sensuality and imagination. It is an old prejudice that exactness, sensuality and imagination are incompatible. This is a credo that I associate with Goethe's theory of colours.
Would you say you are even more attached to Goethe than to all the others, e.g. Ostwald?
I think Ostwald is great in terms of his practicality and effectiveness of working. He also wrote in a way that was fit to print. In terms of basic attitude, Ostwald was also someone who, like Goethe, critically questioned historical previous achievements, but also acknowledged the prophetic and as such was not only a Goethe fan, but he definitely also appreciated Schopenhauer's somewhat divergent view. In addition, he cultivated professional exchange with Munsell, Fechner and Wundt, among others. He was only not granted the privilege of publishing his 'Psychological Theory of Colours' as the core and keystone of his Theory of Colours. Thus, I am also connected in many ways with the draft of a "Psychophysical Light-Colour-Functional Order" by the physicist and Weizsäcker student Eckart Heimendahl, published about 30 years after Ostwald's death, which is explicitly based on Goethe and Schopenhauer as well as more recent findings. In this context, I also appreciate the subtle preliminary work on contrast vision by Chevreul or on the interaction of colour by Josef Albers.
How would one have to incorporate Goethe into today's colour theory?
Goethe's theory of colours begins with a reappraisal of the knowledge of the time in his 'Materialien zur Farbenlehre'. Without doing something similar, even today one cannot convey the claim to treat the subject as a whole. For me, colour theory is about all knowledge that concerns colour.
Colour is basically an unexplained phenomenon and a mystery to this day. There is nothing more complex than light, it remains unexplained to this day. All biological processes are dependent on the light of the sun. There is hardly anything more comprehensive, more universal. Goethe managed to link the diversity of natural phenomena of light and colour, he is unsurpassed in describing this. He also already describes the interaction of colour, as well as polarity as an expression of totality. Thus he speaks of opposite colours, hardly of complementary colours. I think that much more should be included in the theory of colour and design. The theory of perception, for example, the interaction, which is often only studied under laboratory conditions, is neglected and should be brought more into focus.
My aim is to create one or more tuned circles of colour tones that could be used for various didactic and creative purposes. In music, one would speak of the "well-tempered piano". My investigation is limited to the solid colour circle. The purpose of the exercise is to create visual material that makes clear how the colours relate to each other structurally and harmonically. A twelve-tone circle, for example, would suffice. There should not be too many colour tones, because otherwise one gets into a swimming pool. That is why Goethe limited himself to 6 basic colours.
I believe that Goethe and Newton could have come to an understanding if they had lived in the same time. They are simply two different approaches, the life-worldly one in Goethe and the exact-scientific-physical one in Newton. Goethe meant the unification of the two with the term "exact imagination". It remains his great merit to have pointed to such a view of phenomena. Goethe also seems exemplary to me because he brought the whole of life into his colour theory as the 'language of nature'.
Do you have a concern that is important to you?
I'm glad when things continue on the path Goethe pointed out. Today we are much further along than I could have hoped. I am happy about children in their naive, direct way of looking at and discovering the world. Talent should be encouraged, but one should not pour too much into it. The crucial thing for the profession is to increase sensitivity and encourage 'doing'. I am very optimistic about young people, but I would also like to see a little more contemplation in everything to relax our senses. A walk often offers more than a marathon lecture.
In which direction should colour theory be researched?
It is perhaps time to introduce the term "colour science". Many currents can meet here. The point is to bring them together.
An important realisation, for example, is that every visual process is connected to a certain lighting situation, a 'reason' from which the colour sensation arises. Nothing is isolated. Colour diversity arises from a generative connection between this 'reason' and specific lightening or darkening processes. Goethe had already recognised this when he spoke of the 'deeds of light' and the polarity of light and darkness.
The main problem of science today is: one isolates the mysteries too much and says, as long as I don't see anything clear in this isolated situation, I'd rather say nothing before I have to be accused of charlatanry. That wipes the problem off the table. This is what Goethe meant by the exact sensual imagination. Everything belongs to it, every human quality to grasp and understand something. Today, it is also increasingly a question, for example, of sharpening the awareness of analogies between the micro- and macro-worlds.
Has the theme of colour taken a strong hold on you?
Yes - of course. Sensory perceptions of all kinds in their interrelation have always interested me greatly.
(This is followed by an excursion about the fact that the yin and yang within the Korean flag is related to the genetic code of the four amino acids, which is built up combinatorially from basic building blocks that can be classified in a very similar way, something that the Chinese already recognised 3,000 years ago... Thus the conversation takes its further interesting course, which the visitor can almost always follow...)
Thank you very much for this interview, Mr Bendin.
Links
Homepage Eckhard Bendin: Contributions to Colour in Science, Education and Design
https://www.bendin-color.de/
Collection Colour Theory of the TU Dresden:
https://tu-dresden.de/bu/architektur/die-fakultaet/einrichtungen/sam_farbenlehre
http://www.colour.education/sammlung-farbenlehre/
Wikipedia
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammlung_Farbenlehre
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckhard_Bendin
The questions were asked by Holger Everding.
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Colour People Interview
Dr Andreas Kraushaar, FOGRA
Dr Andreas Kraushaar (39) is head of the prepress technology department at Forschungsgesellschaft Druck e.V. (FOGRA). FOGRA is a non-profit institution based in Munich that is primarily dedicated to standardisation and quality in printing processes. In addition to the "Process Standard Offset" (PSO), the FOGRA-ICC profiles are well-known in printing companies. Current is for example "FOGRA39", with which colour can be meaningfully converted into CMYK for offset printing on coated papers.
Dr Kraushaar joined FOGRA after studying media technology at the Technical University of Ilmenau. There he completed his doctorate at RWTH Aachen University in parallel. He has published numerous practical and scientific papers and has played a major role in the implementation of the Process Standard Digital (PSD). He already holds an influential position in the field of colour at a young age - and does so with the greatest enthusiasm.
Kraushaar comes from Eichsfeld and now lives in Munich.
Questions for Andreas Kraushaar
Mr Kraushaar, what is your favourite colour and what do you associate with it?
That's pretty mundane for me. My favourite colour is green. I had my first car painted Kawasaki green metallic. Today I'm almost ashamed of it, but it was the time, I found it very attractive and I still find it very beautiful. Today, for example, when I get to choose tokens, I choose green. This is also the colour of hope - I used to be an altar boy and loved to wear the green mass clothes.
How did you get into the subject of colour?
I studied media technology in Ilmenau and came to lighting technology by chance. There I got to know Professor Dietrich Gall and his lectures. What fascinated me was that as a colour-vision deficient person, he had a very special approach to colour. On the one hand, he was fascinated by colour, but he also wanted to understand and scientifically falsify the judgements of others. So he cleverly tried to question our statements and put hurdles in front of us. I found that very exciting and interesting. Professor Gall also separated the scientific and the harmonic nature of colour very nicely. Professor Gall, who is now retired but still very active, is the reason why I am so intensively involved with colour today.
What is your task today regarding colour?
I have a certain freedom of design in the research work of FOGRA's pre-press department. That is another reason why I feel very comfortable there. I don't just work through fixed programmes, but can set my own priorities and decide for myself where the journey takes me. It is my job to have a very good command of the practical use of colour in printing, so that in seminars, exams and symposia we can strike a balance with practical use. On the one hand we have to know the programmes well so that we know how to implement it well, and on the other hand we have to communicate the procedures well. My main task is to master the practical challenges in the field of colour management, screen measurement and modelling and to present them in simple terms for the target group.
Where is the journey heading?
When it comes to image quality, colour is still a very important aspect. Colour in 3D printing is also becoming an important issue. With colour and appearance, other aspects are added to the colour itself, such as texture, gloss, surface texture and viewing angle.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on the theme of the colour of teeth. This is not only very exciting, but also the most humbling subject I have experienced so far, because there you have the challenges of opalescence, transparency, translucency and fluorescence in addition to reflection. It is the supreme discipline, I am curious to see how the project will develop.
The subject of colour is always exciting and challenging, even if I "only" concentrate on the area of colourimetry, colour appearance, colour differences.
What fascinates you about the topic?
It is the interdisciplinarity. We have so many approaches and so many approaches to colour! Colour harmony, ophthalmology, colour physiology, colour physics.... You can work with colour as an engineer, physicist, designer, biologist or psychologist. I am always fascinated by the beauty of colour, and the simultaneous technical view: how can I reproduce colour as accurately as possible in one way or another, how metameric is it?
Thank you very much for this interview, Dr Kraushaar.
The questions were asked by Holger Everding.
Further information
...you will find under http://www.fogra.de.[:]