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The studio, galley, workshop, and painting store combine to provide an atelier environment with public interface to communicate past and ongoing research and development.
Vision-Space moves us from ‘picture space’ to ‘image space.’
Illusionary space is one of the most pervasive and powerful indicators with respect to human cultural development. The last Renaissance (15-16C) is associated with the geometry of perspective that was later reenforced by optical projection and photographic record. We can think of them collectively as ‘picture space.’ Illusionary space is firmly linked to notions of reality and our subsequent conceptualisations. It is something of a moot question the degree to which the scientific approach methodology, dependent upon the frame of reference, is also a derivative of the picture space paradigm of so-called realism. The picture frame is integral to the illusion of space helping to condition viewer engagement with the pictorial illusion. Similarly, the frame of reference, the corner stone of scientific enquiry, is our creation, our construct and imposition upon the situation being assessed. Everything that subsequently emerges from that line of enquiry is part of that simulation of reality, that illusion of space. It is via our mental designation and conceptual conditioning that measurements are made, and conceptualisations emerge. Our influence is, whether we like it or not, embedded in all measurements which paradoxically constitutes a violation of the assumption of scientific objectivity. To science, the influence of the observer must be removed for a record to be considered veridical and it has set about conforming to this agenda by adopting a system in which we are definitely present through the frame of reference while simultaneously denying it.
Our influence is currently not acknowledged to be present in the records made by our data capture systems. Records made by instrumentation are treated as being ‘accurate’ and ‘veridical.’ Vision-Space asserts that our subsequent conceptualisations drawn from them are missing a vital component with respect to what is involved in us making ‘meaningful’ observations. The oversight inexorably leads science to a point where it must come face to face with the physical implications of the oversight. This manifests as we make the attempt to record at remote scales. The outcomes are declared ‘weird’ as an explanation formed under the terms of the adopted approach methodology, cannot be fathomed. The weirdness is actually in the base level human oversight inherent in the adopted approach methodology. The ‘reality’ is that we can’t take ourselves out of an act of observation and ultimately its counter productive to try. We must come to terms with the oversight and better understand how to ‘observe’ to get closer to the true nature of reality. We must move on from picture space and frames of reference to image space to recognise that light occupies the universe in ways that lie outside the set possibilities allowed for within our current conceptual compass.
Visual artists have, against all odds, essentially kept faith with experiential reality, a process that incrementally moved practitioners away from picture space and its inherent assumptions. Artists, embedded and embodied within the universe, set about manifesting what actually occurs to them as visual perception, moving them away from the limitations and assumptions inherent within the former paradigm. Viewers of the art works are progressively exposed to the basis of visual process which challenges the validity of the imposition of an arbitrary geometry to visual communication. Through visual art we recognise aspects of just how we are embedded within the universe. A viewer experience of the artwork is one where the dynamics of perception resonate. An experience where the nature of the elusive ‘being there factor’ can start to be appreciated. Vision-Space provides the basis for a replacement paradigm to visual stimuli.
In contrast, scientists and mathematicians doubled down with the existing approach methodology minutely exploring the universe through the measurement paradigm. These disciplines have conjointly and productively explored the universe via experimentation using instrumentation. A process where data capture unquestionably stands in for sensory perception. The acceptance of subsequent experimentation and records as being observations is now ubiquitous, but at what cost? Is there a pot of reality gold at the end of the measurement rainbow? Clearly not. While sensitivity can be engineered to take us beyond sensory range, acuity is forfeit. A sound recording is not audition; a photographic record is not vision. A signal is something sent from one sentient being to another sharing a common code, cells do not signal neither to planets, stars or our instrumentation. Information is not in the light array, data-potentials are.
It is just a ‘picture.’ A photograph of a pipe is also not a pipe.
The treachery of images. ’ 1968, Magritte, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA
Some visual art does shows us flashes of the perceptual structure that facilitates visual perception and it the understandings that result from the introspective study of vision that will lead to a more meaningful approach methodology.
Images show us flashes of perceptual structure with aspects that cannot be ascribed to optical projection and the rectilinear propagation of light.
Pine tree near Aix en Provence, 1995-97, Paul Cézanne, Oil on canvas,
The Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia
Our sensory architecture is required of us, as complex biological systems, by the onset of light. The dynamics that ensue from light’s passage through space are scaling through us and appreciation of the factors involved will take us beyond the inherent limitations of the measurement paradigm. Dispassionate onlookers describe the divergent paths between the relevant disciplines as constituting an ‘art/science divide; 17-21C.’ It defines the point where science stopped observing, relegating and delegating perception without full accountability. Our current instrumentation is a filter between us and the nature of reality.
Science considers that anything appearing in art, which cannot find a description or explanation within its terms of reference, to be subjective and inadmissible with respect to its agenda. Why maintain that? Despite the obvious oversight given that factors involved, this attitude still prevails throughout western society. A climate of denial, exclusion and disinterest ensures funding restrictions for artistic exploration and the legitimisation of a casual drift from a viable and significant contributory discipline to a limp, pseudo intellectual cull-da-sac of ideas based or conceptual art. It is permissible of course, that art conforming to the picture space paradigm is used to illustrate scientific discovery!
Virtually blind 1995 John Jupe – Virtual reality (VR) is a misconception.
We are becoming virtually blind, a self-engineered condition where reality is something that can be measured, rendered as realism and screened as a virtual reality (VR). We can immerse ourselves in computer generated simulations, however, Vision-Space clearly indicates that over exposure to non-perceptually media is likely to be affecting our biology through neural redundancy (ASD related conditions and Alzheimers). To old school visual artist like myself, reality remains a relationship we as complex biological systems form with the physical real, a situation that understands and accepts that we have yet to convincingly model visual awareness and that there are serious issues related to the shortfall in our understanding. We just do not know what’s actually involved in us being ‘objective.’ I would maintain that there is nothing more fundamental than this if our quest is to explore the nature of reality.
While the discipline of Visual Art is under siege, the unavoidable realisation is that, if our intention is to make sense of light behaviour, then the assumptions that undermine the phenomenological agenda must be confronted and the related physics (quantum mechanics) reappraised accordingly. Vision is ‘prior to’ science, an ontology where we are obligated to model visual awareness if we are to move forwards. As an artist, squaring visual art with visual perception and hence vision science is not a ‘nice to have.’ It is essential to maintain the connections if we are to ‘make sense’ of the world around us. Unthinkable as it is, the indicators are that the ontology governing science must now undergo radical change.
The research portfolio within Atelier Vision charts my commitment to reestablish this vital linkage and move on.
©2024