SYMPOSIUM
Colour and Light – Concepts and Confusions
Tuesday
8th
May 2012 at 12.30–16
A Symposium on the
epistemology of colour and light to mark the publication of the book
Colour and Light – Concepts and
Confusions by Harald Arnkil (ed.),
Karin Fridell Anter & Ulf Klarén (Aalto University, 2012). The
book is a research report from the
Nordic research project SYN-TES:
Human colour and light synthesis – Towards a coherent field of
knowledge carried out during 2010-11.
Special Guest: C.L.
Hardin (author of Color
for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow)
The symposium
organized by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
/ Department of Art.
Venue:
Aalto University, Arabia campus, Lecture Hall 822, 8th
floor, Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki
Free
admission – All Welcome!
Programme
- 12. 30 Welcome Harald Arnkil
- 12. 40 The Nordic research project SYN-TES: Human colour and light synthesis – Towards a coherent field of knowledge Karin Fridell Anter
- 13. 00 Introducing Colour and Light: Concepts and Confusions Harald Arnkil
- 13. 15 Colour Science and Colour Experience C.L. Hardin
- 14.00–14.30 Coffee break
- 14.30 Panel discussion on themes from Colour and Light…
Harald Arnkil, Karin Fridell Anter, C.L. Hardin, Ulf Klarén
Speakers and
Authors
C.L. Hardin
is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at
Syracuse University, USA. He is the author of Color
for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow (1988)
and co-editor of Color Categories in
Thought and Language (1997). He takes
colour to be a test case for theories about how the qualities of
everyday experience manage to find a place in a quantitative universe
consisting of matter and energy. Color
for philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow
received the Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy
in 1986 and has since been published in
an extended new edition.
Harald Arnkil
is a Finnish artist, educator and colour researcher. Arnkil is
Lecturer in Colour Studies at the Aalto University School of Arts,
Design and Architecture. Besides teaching, he is presently pursuing
doctoral studies and research in the field of colour. Arnkil’s book
Colour in the Visual World – a
handbook for artists, designers and architects,
originally published in 2007 in Finnish as Värit
havaintojen maailmassa, is due to
appear in October 2012.
Karin Fridell
Anter, architect SAR/MSA and PhD
architecture is a researcher specialized in colour in the built
environment. She is an Associate Professor at the Royal Institute of
Technology and a researcher at University College of Arts, Crafts and
Design, both in Stockholm. She has written several books on colour in
architecture and numerous articles in Swedish and international
journals. During 2010-11 she led the Nordic research project SYN-TES:
Human colour and light synthesis - Towards a coherent field of
knowledge.
Ulf Klarén
is a researcher, writer and lecturer on perception, colour and light.
Until his retirement in 2011, he was Associate Professor and head of
the Perception Studio at Konstfack, University College of Arts,
Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. Ulf Klarén’s publications
include a textbook on colour, several scientific reports and
contributions to anthologies as well as articles on art education.
During 2010-11 he was assistant project leader of SYN-TES:
Human colour and light synthesis –Towards a coherent field of
knowledge.
About the book
The experiences of
colour and light are interdependent and cannot be analysed
separately. The colours of the environment influence our experiences
of light and the need for lighting – and vice versa: the intensity,
quality and distribution of light are essential for our perception
and experience of colour. The aesthetics of colour and light play an
important role in the fields of art, design and communication. In the
built environment they influence our experiences and feelings, our
comfort or discomfort and our physiological wellbeing.
A profound
understanding of the interaction between colour, light and human
beings calls for an interdisciplinary approach, which up to now has
been rather rare. As a result researchers and practitioners have
often had difficulty in understanding and relating to one another's
methods and results, although they work with similar questions. One
important aspect of this is the absence of common and generally
accepted concepts. These were the starting points for the
interdisciplinary research project SYN-TES:
Human colour and light synthesis – towards a coherent field of
knowledge, carried out in Konstfack,
Stockholm during 2010–11.
The SYN-TES project
was funded by the Knowledge Foundation (KK-stiftelsen) and was
supported by several Swedish companies working within the area of
colour and light. The project has gathered
internationally acknowledged scientific and technical experts within
a number of fields working in colour and light. These include art,
architecture, psychology and healthcare sciences, as well as leading
companies dealing with lighting, colour and window glass.
SYN-TES has brought
together researchers from five Nordic universities and institutions:
The Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, The
Centre for Visualization at Chalmers University of Technology, the
Department of Environmental Psychology at Lund University, The
Perception Studio at the University College of Art, Crafts and Design
(Konstfack), the Department of Architectural Design, Form and Colour
studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
and the Faculty of Health Sciences at The Sahlgrenska Academy of the
Gothenburg University.
Colour
and Light – Concepts and Confusions,
edited by Harald Arnkil and published by Aalto University School of
Arts, Design and Architecture is a research report from the Nordic
research project SYN-TES. The book includes and introduction by the
American philosopher of science C.L. Hardin and articles by Karin
Fridell Anter and Ulf Klarén.
The texts in this
book were written within an epistemological subproject of SYN-TES.
The aim is to present different scientific
approaches in a broader epistemological perspective, to clarify
conflicting use of concepts and to suggest possible ways of improving
inter-disciplinary understanding. In his introduction to the book,
C.L. Hardin takes a look at the problem of bridging the gap between
conscious experience and scientific data, with particular regard to
the variability of human colour experience. Ulf Klarén, in Natural
Experience and Physical Abstractions,
discusses different epistemological theories concerning perception,
their evolution and their implications for our understanding of
colour and light. In Seeing and
Perceiving Harald Arnkil takes a closer
look at these seemingly simple concepts, providing a starting point
for discussing our visual experience of the world. Light
and Colour: Concepts and their use by
Karin Fridell Anter provides an overview of different approaches that
have led to diverging uses of terminology and concepts within this
field. Some of the most problematic terms and concepts are further
discussed by Harald Arnkil in Lightness
and Brightness and Other Confusions.
