Peter Deussen: From Impressionism to Multimedia

The pre-Socratics had already investigated color models and color perception before Thomas Young, Hermann von Helmholtz and James Clerk Maxwell, and it was especially the French impressionist painters who were to apply this knowledge in their works. These, however, were inspired by Eugène Delacroix, who no longer mixed colors on the palette but began to apply them to the canvas in separate brush strokes (divisionism). The impressionists followed him as did the pointillists who went on to perfect the method. This latter group claimed they were able to induce in the eye of the viewer the (additive) color mixing and not on the palette. Thus, they apparently anticipated certain aspects of our present-day monitors – apparently, since, in the final analysis, this is not true. In 1931 the “Commission Internationale d’Eclairage” began to research systematically subjective color perception by means of more objective methods of measurement and thereby for our monitors and the physiology of our eye.

Prof. Dr. Peter Deussen held a professorship for informatics at the University of Karlsruhe. Among others, his special areas of research were predominantly in the areas of artificial intelligence, multimedia and e-learning. He has accompanied the development of the ZKM from the very beginning.