Index & Editorial

Abstract

Editorial

Color and pandemic

When Maurizio Rossi asked me to write the editorial of the first 2021 issue, the first thought has been about pandemic. This difficult and strange situation has deeply influenced us all. Scaring us, tickling our rebel side, but also in some cases forcing a little bit of meditation. Let me humbly share with you some concise questions and thoughts about color and pandemic. Please bear with me if they seem out of topic. They aim to be just stimuli to start hopefully broader discussions, color enthusiast is a wide community, I truly hope to see it enlarging even more.

Color after pandemic

What will remain in the field of color after this pandemic? Color share with coronavirus the fact that they both need a human to exist. But while the virus is a menace for the host, color is a powerful resource. We all know that color is in the eye of the beholder (more correctly in his/her brain), but we easily forget this fact, treating color as an objective property, external from our visual system. But it is not. Thus, let's put back human at the center of our research on color. A well-designed visual experiment worths thousand formulas.

Color for pandemic

Beside the color we sense and perceive, color has a strong effect on our body and mind. It is not just a property of what we see, it affects our mental and physical health. The many self-made theories about color need scientific research to assess them. Pandemic underlined our weakness; color can support our future strenght.

The pandemic of color

Color research has been fostered for many years by the industries of lighting first, then by the digital printing and recently by the display community. At every step the related business model changed, much faster than major part of scholar's approach. The interest about color is always present, what is changing is the way research is shared and spread and the way industries use it and depends (or not) on it.

In a global marked of research and production, standards and rules are less and less shared and maybe necessary. This can be seen as a positive fact since our knowledge about vision and color is still very limited. We are going to face new challenges about education and knowledge sharing and pandemic has been a test bed. Pandemic is a nightmare that we can't wait to consider history, but we need to keep what we have learned from it.

So what?

A journal is the overall sum of its contributors. If these points raised any comments or further questions, better if controversial, please share with us. They will be the topic of future editorials. Hopefully out of this pandemic

March, 2021

Alessandro Rizzi, Deputy Editor CCSJ

Full professor of Colorimetry and Multimedia, Università degli Studi di Milano