Art, Perception and Indeterminacy

This article considers the phenomenon of visual indeterminacy, which occurs when the sensory data gathered from the visual system cannot be integrated with semantic knowledge. A number of examples are given, including from the author\u27s own art work, and some results presented from a scientific study based on them. The implications for the operation of the mind and, in particular, the nature of aesthetic experience are addressed, and the distinction between the perception of visual forms and their cognitive interpretation is discussed. Arguments about the nature of aesthetic experience are then considered from some historical sources and interpreted in light of the distinctions between perception-cognition and form-content. The paper concludes by summarizing the links between aesthetic experience, the operation of visual perception, and visual indeterminacy

Imaging human vision: an artistic perspective

The purpose of artistic practice has frequently been to translate human visual experience into pictures. By viewing these pictures we can retrospectively share something of the world the artist saw, and the way he or she saw it. Over the centuries artists have evolved highly refined methods for depicting what they see, and the works they produce can provoke strong emotional, aesthetic, and perceptual responses. Looking at a painting by Vincent van Gogh of a vase of sunflowers, for example, can be more thrilling and memorable than seeing a real vase of sunflowers, or even a photograph of the same scene. Why do we respond so strongly to artistic depictions of everyday scenes? The hypothesis considered here is that artists do not attempt to faithfully record reality. Rather, they select and manipulate visual information in ways that are tuned to our subjective experience. I will discuss some of the techniques artists have used to achieve this, and consider how they might be relevant to those designing new forms of imaging technologies in order to improve how they represent visual experience

Consciousness as a Physical Process Caused by the Organization of Energy in the Brain

To explain consciousness as a physical process we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behavior. Recent neuroscientific evidence can be interpreted in a way that suggests consciousness is a product of the organization of energetic activity in the brain. The nature of energy itself, though, remains largely mysterious, and we do not fully understand how it contributes to brain function or consciousness. According to the principle outlined here, energy, along with forces and work, can be described as actualized differences of motion and tension. By observing physical systems, we can infer there is something it is like to undergo actualized difference from the intrinsic perspective of the system. Consciousness occurs because there is something it is like, intrinsically, to undergo a certain organization of actualized differences in the brain

Connecting Art and the Brain: An Artist's Perspective on Visual Indeterminacy

In this article I will discuss the intersection between art and neuroscience from the perspective of a practicing artist. I have collaborated on several scientific studies into the effects of art on the brain and behavior, looking in particular at the phenomenon of “visual indeterminacy.” This is a perceptual state in which subjects fail to recognize objects from visual cues. I will look at the background to this phenomenon, and show how various artists have exploited its effect through the history of art. My own attempts to create indeterminate images will be discussed, including some of the technical problems I faced in trying to manipulate the viewer's perceptual state through paintings. Visual indeterminacy is not widely studied in neuroscience, although references to it can be found in the literature on visual agnosia and object recognition. I will briefly review some of this work and show how my attempts to understand the science behind visual indeterminacy led me to collaborate with psychophysicists and neuroscientists. After reviewing this work, I will discuss the conclusions I have drawn from its findings and consider the problem of how best to integrate neuroscientific methods with artistic knowledge to create truly interdisciplinary approach

Slow Looking at Slow Art: the Work of Pierre Bonnard

Slow looking is an increasingly prevalent strategy for enhancing visitor engagement in the gallery, yet there is little research to show why looking at artworks for longer should be beneficial. The curator of a recent exhibition of Pierre Bonnard at the Tate Gallery in London encouraged viewers to look slowly in order to enrich their experience of his paintings. This article explores some of the reasons why Bonnard’s work in particular rewards the viewer who spends more time studying it. Our account draws on various scientific studies of the ways in which observers process colour contrasts, spatial configuration, and figure-ground segregation in artworks and in everyday vision. We propose that prolonged interactions with works of art can facilitate perceptual learning, and suggest ways in which these effects could be empirically studied using psychological methods

Fovography: A naturalistic imaging media

The aim of our research is to improve the way visual experience is depicted in imaging media by increasing the naturalism of the media. Numerous technical methods for depicting the visual world currently exist. Most of them rely on optical laws that determine the way light rays project onto a plane through an aperture [9]. Physical cameras and computer graphics rendering systems are the most common examples. They are designed to accurately capture or computationally simulate the patterns of light emitted or reflected by objects in the world. The images they produce can be thought of as objectively realistic. However, such images to do not necessarily represent what a human viewer would experience when viewing the same objects; the human visual system is not a camera. While there are some similarities between eyes and cameras, much of what we visually perceive is the result of complex psychological and neurophysiological processing occurring in the visual areas of the brain, for which there is no parallel in current imaging technology [12]. This paper briefly outlines our approach to creating naturalistic imaging media based on the emulation of human visual processes, and how this can improve the way we depict the visual world

Natural Perspective: Mapping Visual Space with Art and Science

Following its discovery in fifteenth-century Italy, linear perspective has often been hailed as the most accurate method of projecting three-dimensional visual space onto a two-dimensional picture plane. However, when we survey the history of European art it is evident that few artists fully complied with its mathematical rules, despite many of them being rigorously trained in its procedures. In this paper, we will consider how artists have actually depicted visual space, and present evidence that images created according to a “natural” perspective (NP) used by artists are judged as better representations of visual space than those created using standard linear (LP) and curvilinear fisheye (FP) projective geometries. In this study, we built a real three-dimensional scene and produced photographs of the scene in three different perspectives (NP, LP and FP). An online experiment in which we asked people to rank the perspectives in order of preference showed a clear preference for NP compared to the FP and LP. In a second experiment, participants were asked to view the real scene and rate each perspective on a range of psychological variables. Results showed that NP was the most preferred and the most effective in depicting the physical space naturally. We discuss the implications of these results and the advantages and limitations of our approach for studying the global metric and geometrical structure of visual space