Topics from the Conference Program
1 Color Pigments and Restoration
2 Color Space Design and Architecture
3 Color Marketing and Trend Research
4 Colorimetry and Information Technology
5 Lighting Design and Lighting Technology
6 Color and Biology
7 Color and Psychology
8 Color Education and Outreach
9 Color and Art
10 Color and Health
11 Color Systems and Order
12 Color Design and Communication
13 Color Technology and Application
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From the opening speech of the conference
Prof. Dr. Axel Buether, Chairman of the Board of the Deutsches Farbenzentrum e.V.
Color as a Tool for Understanding
What is the purpose of an interdisciplinary conference on the topic of “Understanding Color,” given that nearly everyone experiences color from the very beginning of their personal development and intuitively understands it as soon as they interact with their environment through their eyes?
Either we accept our world as we experience it every day, or we question it and form concepts and explanatory models about it. Simply by asking what something looks like, we confront an object with its appearance, distinguish between the sign and the signified, and thereby gain information. Depending on the nature of the question, color is a sensory perception, a material property, a wavelength, or a medium for visual communication.
In nearly all areas of human interaction with the environment, we use color as a tool for understanding; this is why an interdisciplinary conference is the ideal forum for hearing and discussing answers. Representatives from 13 fields of knowledge will provide conference participants with accessible, expert, and up-to-date information on the current state of knowledge in many important areas of color research.
The wealth of existing and new information in the field of color is vast, which is why only through an intellectual exploration of the connections between the individual fields of knowledge in art, design, practice, and science can one gain orientation and thus assimilate the current state of research. The synthesis of the knowledge and experiences of all participants will open up new horizons for each individual beyond their own field of work, thereby making an understanding of the phenomenon of color possible in the first place.
Through overview and in-depth lectures, as well as workshops and interdisciplinary discussions, conference participants will therefore gain insight into the entire spectrum of knowledge regarding color.
Understanding the Explainable and the Incomprehensible
Why does color return to our imaginations and dreams? Why do even people born blind write poems about the incomprehensible—the very thing that fills the living space of their sighted fellow human beings? Without color, the environment changes—and with it, a person’s experience and behavior—as people who have lost their sight later in life tell us, their world suddenly shrinking to the very limits of their own bodies.
Color defines the way the environment appears to us and, at the same time, makes clear how we relate to it. It points to the aspects through which we can acquire knowledge and to those that elude explanation. When considered in isolation, color describes the relationship between surface and form, whereas, when viewed as a whole, it becomes a complexly structured fabric that organizes the landscapes of visual space all the way to the depths of the visible horizon. Color reveals to us the order of things and, at the same time, something intangible that moves us, fills us with wonder, and leaves us speechless.
Since each conference participant, within their own discipline, can grasp only a tiny fragment of what can be said and experienced about color, openness to other perspectives and a methodical approach to the subject of one’s own inquiry are prerequisites for the possibility of a deeper “understanding.”
The interconnection of the various thematic focuses offers an inexhaustible potential for broadening access to one’s own scholarly and artistic research and fosters a culture of exchange and mutual understanding.
