How Norway Made the World Whiter (NorWhite)

NorWhite is the first large-scale research project that will connect the challenging topics: whiteness, technological innovation, and mass-exploitation of natural resources in a single case study. The project will do this through an interdisciplinary research design grounded in an original and creative humanities approach that merges art history and artistic research. NorWhite will study the Norwegian innovations the chemical compound titanium dioxide and the white pigment titanium white in a historical, aesthetic, and critical lens—focusing on how the innovations transformed surfaces in art, architecture, and design—in order to show how aesthetic transformation is driven by technological development. 

The overall objective of NorWhite is to critically investigate the cultural and aesthetic preconditions of a complex and unexplored part of Norwegian technology and innovation history that has—as this project boldly claims—made the world whiter. To operationalize the overall objective, NorWhite will conduct ground-breaking analyses of five interlinked WPs with different size and scope: WP1) Archival research – building a database from a vast never-before studied archive, WP2) Norwegian white – investigating narratives of white aesthetics, modernism, and national identity, WP3) White context – understanding white color in art, architecture and design in a wider context, WP4) Artistic research – visualizing aesthetic properties from TiO2 to smart materials, and WP5) contextualizing by research-based exhibition making and extensive public engagement and outreach in collaborations with public institutions and industry stakeholders. 

By weaving together historical, critical, aesthetic, and artistic methods with public engagement and outreach, NorWhite reveals a complex and challenging story of how a local Norwegian innovation came to have planetary consequences.