The act of looking is not a passive process. A simple reduction by abstraction or by using slitted mask that overlays an image, can produce a very different perception of an object. I loved the image given to us in our lecture yesterday...
For example, what do you see to your right?
Is this the image of a silhouetted man or woman in a high rise tower, raising her window curtain, looking out on to a world, - as miserable as sin, totally depressed, incarcerated in this concrete tomb some 60 feet above the ground at night, with nothing to live for?
The slitted mask simply obscures, and to some degree abstracts, the viewers perception of reality....
... Or is the image simply that of an innocent of a cup of coffee being poured, (with an overlay mask of course), that makes it look like the symbol of the person being incarcerated?
I loved the example given to us at last weeks' lecture, so I have tried to re-create it here...
It was a good example of this mis-perception of truth, and how our minds can be 'seduced' from the innocent image, into the complete abstract.
The point of this test, "what do you see" - a cup of coffee/tea, ... (in which there was minimal information that we began to make sense of), even though the indications of meaning were already erroneous. When we see something, we anticipate what it may mean, and then convert that into a perception.
By organising what is 'limited information' into the whole, (the Gestalt (a German word for 'shape or form') as it is called, which derives its name from early 20th-century psychology) we perceive the world and immersed environment around us, and our own existence within it. [See the work by Richard Gregory 1998, "Eye and Brain", by Oxford University Press; published in Oxford and Tokyo].
Until the early part of the 20th-century, psychologists assumed that the perception of colours and shapes could be analysed purely in terms of component parts. It was around about this time that a particular group of psychologists who were exploring the concept of Gestalt started to challenge this. They put forward the comment that
"the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".In other words, they drew attention to the relationships of objects and experiences, together with the context of it also. The concept of 'differentiation' is extremely important within this profile of Gestalt too.
"Imagine the experience of a newborn baby, for instance, it must consider that the child's state as a whole", according to Koffka's book "The Growth of the Mind: an introduction to Child psychology", Koffka, K., 1928, 2nd edition. London; Kegan Paul, (first edition, 1924).
When referring to images of 'Figure & Ground', in essence, 'Something stands out'. - For example,
In another example of visual trickery, These lines drawn in parallel appear to have different lengths.
We read these lines based on our intention and our intentionality to perceive. (See the work provided by Richard Gregory 1998. In his book the psychology of Seeing).In reality, each of these three lines are exactly the same length. I know, because I drew one, and then copied it twice to make up the set of three! Another famous example of this "misperceiving" is seen in "Plato's cave" which is a mythical Greek story about making a mistake when viewing something within the shadows of the cave.
What happens is that your brain, (and studies show that this occurs (in the conflict of the) left brain hemisphere and whilst your right hemisphere is engaged with the image only), the left side, independently comes up with a hypothesis from the image it has received upon each of the retinas from your eyes. Once your left dominant brain hemisphere has decided upon the hypothesis (which in other words, is just an assumption of course), then that assumption then becomes a real perception, - and then, if that perception is left in situ. un-challenged and unchecked, it then becomes "the fact". When we describe Art as a process searching for the truth, (or in the case of the famous quote I recall from Pablo Piccaso, that "Art is a lie, which makes us realise the truth"), we can easily relate the whole notions started by Kant, (also searching for his version of "truth"), which has occupied not just Philosophy and the art world, but also psychology, physics and even astrophysics amongst so many other disciplines, ever since.
Other analysts of psychology and human perception (particularly those studying artificial intelligence), state that 'the input data remains the same, while the interpretation can vary significantly'. Bruce,V. & Green, P.R. "Visual Perception: Physiology, Psychology ... & Ecology".
Francisco Varrella, in his book of 1992, Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition (published by Stanford University press), in which, he says; "In short, the world is not something that is given to us, but something we engage with, we move, we eat, we touch etc within it", and therefore our perception is crafted by all of those interactions each day, hour, minute, second and moment we exist.
Figure and ground representation is used extensively in art. Traditionally, this is been a key feature of it up to the 20th century, but if now, one was to look at the works of Allan McCollum's work "A collection of 30 drawings" he seems determined to turn this notion on its head.
- Alan McCullum has also created a Tate video called "Over 10,000 individual worlds" which is very much worth watching, - in which he creates an 'alphabet' of objects and moulded combinations, in order to create a 'vocabulary' which shows mass production, and how even within a world of mass production, one can create uniqueness in an individual object.
These drawings, based on the original objects that he moulded in a mass production style, have individual identity and McCullen has created them in which, in my opinion, can build likened to a heraldic shields of symmetry. These devices were used extensively in the past as exactly that, symbols of identity. The association of a symbol to a family name is pure fabrication of course, but it's strength of identity is wholly born out of our perception and our ability to associate.
I found this lecture on Figure and Ground to be highly encouraging. I am now thinking of ways to recreate a more stimulating perception, but perhaps something distorted, if not detached from the real.
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