Experiential Reality

Records and observation

Most people conceive of the world in terms of the parameters they have taken onboard at a very early stage in their education. These parameters are not bedrock however, they are themselves dependent upon setting-out conceptualisations, such as frames of reference. So, most individuals think in-terms-of preset conceptualisations subsumed as bedrock, and it is through these that exploration is subsequently conducted.

Experiential reality is dependent upon sensory constraints where the senses have evolved as part of the environment. Hence, what occurs to us on an experiential basis is not defined by a base set of conceptualisations or fully represented in mechanical records. Our perceptions emerge from engagements within the environment that includes us. Artist don’t assume a form of objectivity in order to act upon the environment. While what we perceive may be influenced by what we have subsequently conceptualised and even be influenced by contributions from memory, the primary operations that lead to perception are not defined by them. Those forms of contribution to perception are supplementary.

Visual perception emerges in the main, from the data potentials light delivers with the formation in part reliant upon how light occupies the universe. Art works can record flashes of perceptual structure and we need to investigate the nature of reality on terms of engagement commensurate with that. Our current data-capture devices do not recognise important aspects of experiential reality or the relationship we as complex biological systems form with the physically real.

To move forwards we have to ‘observe’ free from the assumptions that underpin direct objectivity and seek instead, to use experiential encounter to challenge the voracity of the base line conceptualisations that have been so useful to us to date. We need to adopt an experiential ontology.

Artists produce ‘images’ where our current instrumentation produces ‘pictures.’ We observe where our instrumentation merely records what it was designed to interface with. As complex biological systems, our relationship to light, electromagnetic radiation, whatever, is not limited to the interface we have developed as instrumentation. On the face of it, we should not be surprised that our current simulations of reality are limited and deficient. Reality is not defined by records and the deficit (stuff not showing up in records), is not a matter to be addressed by greater resolution, accuracy or power.

By keeping faith with an experiential ontology, artists have remained consistent and concentric with the nature of reality. A painting contains ‘more than’ a picture. In contrast and for expediency, science has allowed instrumentation to stand in for observation without due consideration. This expediency has enabled great technological progress and discovery, but the disciplines are now pressing hard upon the outer limits of what is achievable given the inherent imitations of the adopted approach methodology. The intellectual expediency involves a ‘sleight of hand,’ one where science claims ‘objectivity’ where in reality, this condition has not been satisfied. Science deploys the word ‘signal’ where it is interfacing with a data-potential. A situation where the limited simulations produced are declared ‘reality’. We must address and understand what’s actually involved us being objective. In some important respects, a painting can take us further than a particle accelerator or radio telescope.

Pictures and Images, 1988 John Jupe

Some aspects of visual art have also succumbed to the same sleight of hand, presenting an obvious or naive situation where so-called ‘photographic realism’ is accepted as ‘realistic’. Conceptual or ideas based art is disengaged from the coalface of the discipline. In many people’s minds the role of visual art has been supplanted by instrumentation which ‘justifies’ the disciplines suppression. Art’s relationship to science is seen by many ‘supporting institutions’ to be one where it is most usefully deployed in the illustration of scientific breakthrough!

The Decohered Self, John Jupe 1998

Vision-Space identifies that so-called virtual reality ‘VR’ is a misleading if not dangerous misconception. It identifies the frame of reference as being a human construct that conditions all subsequent outcomes. The invention limits the design and operation of our data-capture devices. We then disown and forget the provenance to assert clean, mechanised records, as objective data. The reality is however that the instruments are acting as filters that we place in the way of reality, for expediency.

There are no ‘pictures’ in the phenomenon of vision, no picture frames or frames per-second. There is no information structure ‘blur’ and motion blur does not occur. There is no depth-of-field. As there are no ‘pictures’ to ‘fuse,’ there is no binocular fusion occurring. The entire picture paradigm is only remotely or at best superficially related to ‘observation.’

The notion that a visual encounter is akin to a camera and its data-capture process panning a real setting, is infantile. The inevitable and unavoidable corollary of this is that conceptualisation of the universe based upon the frame of reference and mechanical record is similarly, infantile.

Vision-Space is a new form of illusionary space based on what we can discern on an experiential basis as being consistent with perceptual structure as opposed to merely complying with optical projection or the the arbitrary geometry of central perspective.

In terms of technology, TRIZ¹ analysis identifies Vision-Space as a paradigm shift for all forms of information display and the way we interact with them. We have the basis of the first perceptual technology. With the basis of Vision-Space identified we can appreciate that visual artists (17-21C) have been incrementally moving away from pictorial space to the identification of aspects of perceptual structure and by so doing, deepening our relationship with real. It is now time to computationally model visual awareness, use this to instruct our investigations of the visual system and brain function. This will, in turn, allow us to reevaluate retinal function and it’s interface with environmentally conditioned light. The understandings will allow us to ‘observe’ better and more meaningfully at all scales.

1. TRIZ problem solving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ