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NORDIC LIGHT & COLOUR
5
INTRODUCTION
Our visual experience of space is formed in an interaction
between light, colour and human perceptual ability. Even in a
worldwide perspective there are, however, very few research
projects or educational initiatives that investigate this interac-
tion as a coherent field of knowledge (Fridell Anter 2013). In
April 2012, a unique PhD course on light and colour was held
at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in
Trondheim, with funding from NordForsk and participants from
four Nordic countries.
The PhD course was initiated from the large Nordic research
project
SYN-TES.: Human colour and light synthesis: Towards a
coherent field of knowledge
(www.konstfack.se/SYN-TES), which
was carried out during 2010-2011 by an interdisciplinary group
of researchers and practical light and colour experts from
Nordic universities and companies. One of the aims of the proj-
ect was to enhance collaboration and understanding between
different professions and disciplines working with colour and
light; education at the PhD-level is a very suitable arena for
this.
GENERAL PRESENTATION OF THE COURSE
The course was conducted in English. It was led by Professor
Barbara Matusiak, leader of the
Light & Colour Group
at NTNU,
together with Associate professor Karin Fridell Anter from
University College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) in
Stockholm. The approach was genuinely interdisciplinary, with
as much emphasis on light as on colour and involving a diver-
sity of approaches such as physics, architecture, perception
psychology, performance art, lighting design and health and
care sciences. Apart from lectures, the course included work-
shops where participants could investigate different aspects of
colour and light in the Room laboratory and Daylight laboratory
of NTNU and at interesting indoor and outdoor places in Trond-
heim. The final step of the course was the writing of scientific
essays that included both light and colour issues. In total the
course gave 7,5 ECTS.
Not only the lecturers but also the course participants repre-
sented a very broad competence. The course was open to PhD
candidates at Nordic universities, with the demand that their
thesis work should deal with light and/or colour. The seventeen
participants were active in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Fin-
land and belonged to professions and disciplines such as civil
engineering, art, architecture, nursing, design, environmental
psychology, and architecture. This opened for many possibili-
ties to learn from each other and to develop valuable profes-
sional connections for the future.
At the end of the course, all participants gave a written
anonymous course evaluation, which was very positive but also
pointed out things that should be improved. The
Light & Colour
Group
at NTNU hopes to be able to give the course again in
spring 2014, in a slightly revised form.
TO CREATE A COMMON PLATFORM
One of the aims of the course was to create the preconditions
for interaction between people with different professional and
academic perspectives, and the course was open for PhD can-
didates within any subject, as long as their thesis work dealt
with colour and/or light. Thus the field and level of knowledge
differed much between the participants. Some of them had
almost finished their thesis work, whereas others had started
it very recently. Some had a professional background where co-
lour and/or light were essential, such as architecture, art and
design. Others studied colour and/or light issues within disci-
plines that have other central fields of interest, like environ-
mental psychology and health science. This created an initial
challenge to establish a common platform of knowledge, from
which lectures, workshops and group discussions could start.
We identified three important aspects of this knowledge plat-
form.
- a theoretical understanding of the fact that colour and light
can be approached and studied from many different
perspectives, and a recognition of the differences between
them
- an understanding of the Natural Colour System (NCS), which
was to be used as the language for descriptions and analyses
of colour during the course
- an understanding of basic photometric concepts and
terminology, which were necessary for understanding lectures
and assignments during the course
To achieve this, all participants were asked to read a number of
texts and had to pass a pre-course test before being admit-
ted. The main text dealt with the three knowledge traditions of
perception, physics and psychopysics, and the colour and light
concepts belonging to these traditions (Fridell Anter 2012). The
same words – for example the basic ones of
colour and light
–
are used within all these traditions, but they do not refer to the
same thing. For example, the same amount of (photometric)
light can mean different levels of (perceived) light, depending
on the spatial context and the person’s adaptation. Also, the
same (physical) colour will be perceived differently depending
on such as surrounding colours. These conceptual ambiguities
had to be made clear, in order to make it possible to follow lec-
tures and workshops and to facilitate communication between
course participants from different knowledge traditions.