Creative Combinatorics

Max Bense

Max Bense (1910 – 1990) was a German philosopher and writer, in the fields of philosophy of science, logic, aesthetics, and semiotics. He published books about the philosophy of nature as well as “aesthetical information” and information-theory-based aesthetics. Bense worked at the University of Stuttgart since 1949 becoming full professor in 1963. In addition, he worked at the adult education centre and at the College of Design in Ulm from 1953 to 1958.

Ostwald and the Russian Avantgarde art movement

Ostwald’s energetics influenced the thinking of the Russian Marxist Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) and his color theory the art of the Russian Avantgarde after the Revolution (e.g. Kazimir Malevich). Bogdanov himself developed also a theory of organisation which he called Tektology what he viewed as a new universal science (1922). For Bogdanov knowledge had to be seen as the organisation of experience.

Bogdanov tried, with modifications, to extent Ostwald’s project of conceiving everything in the terms of the transformation of energy. (Gare, p. 234)

• Charlotte Douglas, Energetic abstraction: Ostwald, Bogdanov, and the Russian post-revoltionary art, in: Bruce Clarke and Linda Linda Dalrymple Henderson (eds.), From energy to information : representation in science and technology, art, and literature. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford Univ. Press, 2002, pp. 76-94
• Arran Gare, Aleksandr Bogdanov’s history, sociology and philosophy of science, in: Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part A 31 (2000) 231-248
• Charlotte Douglas, Wilhelm Ostwald und die Russische Avantgarde, in: Miltiadis Papanikolaou (Ed.), Licht und Farbe in der Russischen Avantgarde : die Sammlung Costakis aus dem Staatlichen Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst Thessaloniki ; eine Ausstellung des Staatlichen Museums für Zeitgenössische Kunst Thessaloniki, der Berliner Festspiele und des Museums Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in Zusammenarbeit mit der Griechischen Kulturstiftung Berlin. Köln: DuMont, 2004.

Sensual Chemistry: Aesthetics as a Motivation for Research

A paper which matches the topic of Ostwald’s work on the “Harmony of Forms”:

Sensual Chemistry: Aesthetics as a Motivation for Research

Abstract: Sensual, aesthetic, and even artistic considerations are an important motivation for general interest in chemistry and the development of specific research problems. Examples are given showing how these considerations have been put into play by many eminent physical, theoretical, and synthetic chemists. It is argued that more attention needs to be given to sensual and aesthetic issues in understanding how chemical discoveries are made and in order to better teach the subject.

The author Robert Root-Bernstein also wrote a short paper with the title “Wilhelm ostwald and the science of art”, in: Leornardo : Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology , 39 (2006) p. 418

Robert Root-Bernstein, Sensual Chemistry – Aesthetics as a Motivation for Research, in: HYLE–International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 9, No.1 (2003), pp. 33-50

Two exhibitions I came across: Beyond Measure and Nature Design

In the last months I came across at two exhibitions whose topics fit the one of this blog:

• In April 2008 I visited Kettle’ Yard in Cambridge, Greta Britain and the its special exhibition Beyond Measure: conversations across art and science.

  

  (Picture via http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/)

  This exhibition – with its associated workshops, talks and events – explores how geometry is used by artists and astronomers, bio-chemists, engineers, surgeons, architects, physicists and mathematicians – among many others – as a means to understand, explain and order the world around us. It draws parallels between the artist’s studio, the laboratory and the study as equivalent places for thinking, imagining and creating.

• In November last year I visited the Museum of Design in Zurich with the exhibition Nature Design – From Inspiration to Innovation.
  

  Nature has always been a source of inspiration for the design of the human environment. However, it cannot be overlooked that the connections between nature and the various design disciplines have once again become far more intensive in recent years. The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich refers with “Nature Design” to this phenomenon and presents an international selection of objects and projects from the fields of design, architecture, landscape architecture, art, photography and scientific research which do not simply depict or imitate nature but use it as a starting point and a reservoir of inspiration to present innovative answers to the relationship between man and nature.

Wilhelm Ostwald’s color theory

Wilhelm Ostwald’s color theory

Ostwald’s Color Primer – Snip through a double-cone

Expressed in our modern technical language, we can say that Ostwald attempted to construct a perceptual colour-system using non-empirical methods. In place of Munsell’s three parameters, he selected an alternative group of variables: namely, colour-content, white-content and black-content. […] We can thus formulate the guiding principle behind Ostwald’s theory of colour in the following way: the most universal mixture is the mixture of full colours, white and black. Each pigmented colour can be characterised by specifying the colour-content (at a certain colour-hue), white-content and black-content.

Jan J. Koenderink on Ostwald’s color theory

Jan J. Koenderink: Colour, old age, and accepted truth

What Jan Koenderink wrote below, is also true for me! 😎

Now and then I become so much interested in a person’s work that I really want to know more. I then read all I can dig up – the science, the reactions of contemporaries, and the bits and pieces that might give me glimpses of personal life. The last occasion this happened to me concerned Ostwald. It turned out to be an often surprising, thus very entertaining, and also rewarding exercise.

Jan J. Koenderink, Colour, old age, and accepted truth, in: Perception 28 (1999) 1, 1-4

Hidden connections

Today more and more connections between “in-formation”, education as well as advertising, art and design are visible in domains like information literacy, information design and knowledge media design.

One ‘hidden’ connection to information science is shown here: Horst Rittel, later professor of design in Berkeley, was a successor of Max Bense at the Ulm School for Design founded by Max Bill. Ostwald was mentioned by Bill in the afterword of the German edition of Kandinsky’s "Point and line to plane". Max Bense wrote books about philosophy of nature and aesthetic information, Rittel together with Werner Kunz a book on the foundation of information science in Germany.

• Kandinsky, Punkt und Linie zu Fläche: Beitrag zur Analyse der malerischen Elemente (Bern-Bümpliz 1973).
• Werner Kunz and Horst Rittel, Die Informationswissenschaften: ihre Ansätze, Probleme, Methoden und ihr Ausbau in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (München 1972).

Color and combinatorics

Wilhelm Ostwald and the Bauhaus

In the Twenties Ostwald got contact to members of the Bauhaus, e.g. to Walter Gropius. He gave talks at the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927. The same year he was invited to join the Bauhaus board of trustees. Nevertheless most of the Bauhaus members remained offish to his ideas.

• Albrecht Pohlmann, ‘Wilhelm Ostwald: Farbe im Konflikt zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft’, Mitteilungen der Wilhelm-Ostwald-Gesellschaft zu Großbothen 7 (2002) 2, 39-53.
• Philip Ball, ‘Color theory in science and art. Ostwald and the Bauhaus’, Angewandte Chemie (Engl. Ed.), 43 (2004) 4842-4.

Wilhelm Ostwald and the Werkbund

In 1912 Ostwald joined the Werkbund which aimed at standardising industrial design. He published a paper on “standards” in the yearbook of the Werkbund in which he called art a “social product” which made it necessary to standardise it.

• Wilhelm Ostwald, ‘Normen’, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes 3 (1914) 77-86