I’ve seen this brief note from Wired two or three times in the last week or so now:

“Blood-spurting martyrs, biblical parables, ascendant doves — most church windows feature the same preachy images that have awed parishioners for centuries. But a new stained-glass window in Germany’s Cologne Cathedral, to be completed in August, evokes technology and science, not religion and the divine. Contemporary German artist Gerhard Richter designed the 65-foot-tall work to replace the original, destroyed by bombs in World War II. As a starting point, he used his own 1974 painting 4096 Colors. To create that piece — a 64-by-64 grid of squares — Richter devised a mathematical formula to systematically mix permutations of the three primary colors and gray. Funny coincidence: 4,096 is also the number of “Web-smart” colors that display consistently on older computer screens, a limitation some Web designers still take into account. (Today’s monitors, of course, can handle pretty much any hue.) The Cologne window is made of 11,500 four-inch ” pixels” cut from original antique glass in a total of 72 colors. Why not 4,096? Turns out there are stained glass-smart colors, too. Some hues in Richter’s initial design were either historically inaccurate or too pale — they would have outshone the squares around them. So the artist modified his palette to include only colors with a suitably archaic cast. Because it’s fine for a church window to look like it’s been designed by a computer, as long as it’s a computer with a Gothic sensibility.”

It’s really difficult for me to imagine something like this. In recent years I’ve lamented the lack of stained glass — or any kind of significant, artistic, architectural aspect — in modern church buildings. A large church I attended before moving to Arkansas installed a fan-dangled stage lighting get-up, which I referred to as a poor replacement for stained glass. The blurry textures these lights beamed onto the walls did nothing, in my opinion, to enhance the space. Awe, reverence, worship was not heightened by a wall full of pixelated light.

I know nothing of Richter’s work. I am glad to see a church allowing a modern artist such freedom, but my own personal aversion to the ubiquitous digital presence in our cultures stirs up a mild disgust at this particular work.

I crave the tactile.

From the latest issue of Real Simple:

Two of this year’s “new” shades — sage and curry — sound decades away from the avocado green and harvest gold that distinguished so many interiors in the 1970s. But guess what? The colors are exactly the same.

Wait — so there are no new shades under the sun? Not really, says Patricia Verlodt, president of Color Services and Associates, a color-consulting firm in Wonder Lake, Illinois. When color experts like Verlodt devise palettes for their corporate clients, they draw from a vast bank of existing shades, renaming their picks to pique interest. (Harvest gold? Ho-hum. Curry? How worldly!)

Verlodt searches constantly for fresh ideas, consulting flower and rock guides, cookbooks, baby-nam books and even maps. “People think of places when they think of colors,” she says. So move over, linen white, and make way for next year’s Tuscan beige. (page 247)

I’ve never understood how they, whoever “they” used to be, got away with calling those colors gold and avocado. That green doesn’t look like the skin or meat of any avocado I’ve ever eaten. But it looks less like sage! Renaming the old harvest gold curry seems to be a more appropriate tag.

I’ve mentioned before how there’s no such thing as a bad color, but there are poor applications of colors. Apparently the above snippet refers to paint colors and not appliance colors. Regardless, I feel the need to warn Patricia and her decision making peers to keep these colors — whatever they’re called — off of kitchen and bathroom appliances!

These are very poor applications of these colors.