is the title of a new doctoral thesis in German language by Albrecht Pohlmann, 1910, University of Halle.

It describes also Ostwald’s activities with the Bridge, the Munich "Institute for the Organization of Intelellectual Work" (Chapter 4. 2. 2) and contains some further chapters of interest also for media historians like chapter 8.3. "The copied image" and others.

Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909, is among the scientists who have devoted themselves to the principles of visual design. This dissertation comprehensively represents, for the first time, the genesis of his colour theory in the scientific, art political, art historical and aesthetic context of its time. Since 1903 he devoted himself to painting technique, and finally, in 1914, he developed a colour atlas on behalf of the Deutscher Werkbund. His aim was to create an authoritative colour system as a means of understanding for artists, designers and architects, given the confusingly large amount of new colourants. Ostwald established a new theory of body colours based upon the four-colour theorem of Ewald Hering, which made it possible to measure colours in a simple manner. At the same time, from the organizing principles of his colour system (a colour solid in the form of a double cone) he developed a colour harmony. After World War I, he encountered protest of expressionist artists. Constructivists and functionalists took particular interest in his theories, such as with the Dutch ‘De-Stijl’ group, the Russian avant-garde movement and at the Bauhaus, where Ostwald taught in 1927 at the invitation of Walter Gropius. The main objective of his art technological research was to create a universal grammar of visual media in the era of the second technological revolution, hence his interest in photography, abstract film and picture transmission. The reproducibility of works of art appeared to him to be the requirement of a democratic society. His practical art technological experiments were embedded in a comprehensive art and media theory, which Ostwald had developed on the basis of his “Energetics” (1891) and his positivist “Philosophy of Nature” (1902).

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In his work he also thought about information systems and developed a planning/design method known as IBIS (Issue-Based Information System) for handling wicked problems. With his German colleague Werner Kunz Rittel also wrote a book on the foundation of information science in Germany (Werner Kunz and Horst Rittel, Die Informationswissenschaften: ihre Ansätze, Probleme, Methoden und ihr Ausbau in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, München 1972).

A short biography about Horst Rittel in the publication “University of California: In Memoriam, 1992 : A publication of the Academic Senate, University of California, Information on this publication may be obtained by contacting the Academic Senate Office on any of the University of California campuses / David Krogh, Editor”

Werner Kunz and Horst W. J. Rittel, Issues as elements fo information systems. Working Paper No. 131
July 1970, reprinted May 1979, University of California, Berkeley

Chanpory Rith and Hugh Dubberly, ‘Why Horst W. J. Rittel Matters’, Design Issues 23 (2007)1, 72-91.

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• 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.

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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).

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