"And the nature of the center is such that, although it is single, indivisible and motionless, it is nevertheless found in many, or rather all, of the divisible and moveable lines everywhere. And of those invisible circles, that is, the Mind, the Soul and Nature, the circle of the visible world is an image."
Marsilio Ficino, Commentary of Plato's Symposium on Love (1544)
"Thus is has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is the center of totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center. The concept of centered structure - although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the episteme as philosophy or science - is contradictorily coherent. And as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire."
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play" 1966, in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London. 1978), 279
Both quotes from Robin Evans' The Projective Cast p.51, 53
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Uta Barth
Uta Barth's use of altered depths of field and its subsequent blurring, I feel begin to express the notion of vision and learning to see. When we "see" things, we effortlessly assemble many parts to form a seamless whole, her photographs can be read as what it may be like to see without seeing; that is to witness light and colour but to view it without meaning.
Dante's Divine Comedy
"Two kinds of model might therefore be imagined: the one a complete nest of spheres seen from outside, the other a partial view of the same from within."
p.19 Perturbed circles. Robin Evans. The Projective Cast.
p.19 Perturbed circles. Robin Evans. The Projective Cast.
Saturday, 28 February 2009
First terms film: Iterative Reconstructions
Iterative Reconstructions from Nancy Ni Bhriain on Vimeo.
Previous Film which dealt with using film to represent the reconstructive nature of memory:
It is known that the process of memory is a reconstructive rather than reproductive process, always including small elements of error or creation by the brain. This film explores the nature of memory; how every space one enters is experienced as a combination of previous experiences mixed with the sensory experience of the current physical space.
In the film the protangonist moves through a series of spaces of her own creation. We enter the process far into the iterative process. The initial scenes that are informing her choices of creation are long lost as recognisable wholes and now embedded as fragments within the new scenes. Within each scene, the character acknowledges fragments which go on to inform the next scene. The film culmulates in the merging of both visual fragments aswell as perspectives experienced previously by the protangonist.
Friday, 27 February 2009
down the corridor
just a sketch after effects file to look at introducing the labyrinthine nature of the building - way too long. Need to figure out how to hide the flat nature of it and to integrate 3d close ups when detail is required. Think I'll create an arched ceiling that reveals floors above. Electrical particles will spark when the camera moves into the corridor and reveals Emily at the end of it examining one of the books
feathery moving structure
Another test to see how I can create a dynamic structure. The flower structures, through their opeining closing and movement would be able to form arches and other structures.
Using the hair module with the feather function and two different materials.
linking the stalk to the head of the flower using expresso, would be better if it had more of a bend
Using the hair module with the feather function and two different materials.
linking the stalk to the head of the flower using expresso, would be better if it had more of a bend
Particle test
First test with particles. Particles are going to be used to change parts of the structure into new forms, to represent the dynamism of the system.
Also, might be a way of merging scenes, to zoom into a miniscule scale and out to reveal the new structure.
This is basic particles in Cinema 4d, using 4 different omni lights with turbulence.
Global Illumination, Soft shadow mapping
It took 4 hour 22 minutes, the output is 700 x 400, probably should have made it smaller.
Playing around with the lights to create the heavenly feeling of the final scene - its a bit 0sx leopard for my liking at the moment.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Systems Architecture...
is the conceptual design that defines the structure and or behaviour of a system.
The structure of components, their interrelationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time
It is a representation because it is used to convey the informational content of the elements comprising a system, the relationships among those elements, and the rules governing those relationships.
It is a process because a sequence of steps is prescribed to produce or change the architecture, and/or a design from that architecture, of a system within a set of constraints.
(All taken from Wikipedia: Systems Architecture)
The structure of components, their interrelationships, and the principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time
It is a representation because it is used to convey the informational content of the elements comprising a system, the relationships among those elements, and the rules governing those relationships.
It is a process because a sequence of steps is prescribed to produce or change the architecture, and/or a design from that architecture, of a system within a set of constraints.
(All taken from Wikipedia: Systems Architecture)
List of texts to use to develop critique
To explore the representative process of perception (its depiction within architecture and art) and how we consume and perceive within an historical context:
The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries
Robin Evans
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England
1995
Vision and Visuality
Hal Foster
1988
Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought
Martin Jay
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London
1994
The Production of Space
Henri Lefebvre
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Blackwell Publishing, Malden, USA, Oxford, UK, Victoria, Australia
First published 1974
Translated 1991
Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge
Alberto Pérez Gomez and Louise Pelletier
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England
2000
Exploring the nature of contemporary vision - in the context of media and techno /cyberspace
Simulations
Jean Baudrillard
Foreign Agent Series, distributed by The MIT Press
1983
The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft
Anne Friedberg
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England
2006
Exploring the scientific explanation of perception and consciousness
I am a strange loop
Douglas Hofstadter
Basic Books: A Member of the Perseus Books Group, New York
2007
Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World
Chris Frith
Blackwell Publishing, Malden, USA, Oxford, UK, Victoria, Australia
2007
Eye and Brain
The Psychology of Seeing
R.L Gregory
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London
Third Edition 1977
The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries
Robin Evans
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England
1995
Vision and Visuality
Hal Foster
1988
Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought
Martin Jay
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London
1994
The Production of Space
Henri Lefebvre
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Blackwell Publishing, Malden, USA, Oxford, UK, Victoria, Australia
First published 1974
Translated 1991
Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge
Alberto Pérez Gomez and Louise Pelletier
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England
2000
Exploring the nature of contemporary vision - in the context of media and techno /cyberspace
Simulations
Jean Baudrillard
Foreign Agent Series, distributed by The MIT Press
1983
The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft
Anne Friedberg
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England
2006
Exploring the scientific explanation of perception and consciousness
I am a strange loop
Douglas Hofstadter
Basic Books: A Member of the Perseus Books Group, New York
2007
Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World
Chris Frith
Blackwell Publishing, Malden, USA, Oxford, UK, Victoria, Australia
2007
Eye and Brain
The Psychology of Seeing
R.L Gregory
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London
Third Edition 1977
Thesis (Written and Design) Aims
My interest in this project was started by a desire to express the wonder I felt at learning about the way in which the human brain uses a complex process of translation and representation to take input sensory information and produce the normally seamless experience of reality that we feel.
The building and its life as a film is intended to explore this process, using the architecture as a definition of the structural systems, hierarchies and mechanisms at work.
But as I read and research more I realise that my real interest is in this representational process. The representational process of perception, the crossover between the theories of vision and the scientific evidence constantly emerging that shows the brain translates information and organises it in systems to produce our sense of perception.
The ongoing process of learning dictates how we perceive our surroundings. In the context of neuroscience, this is explained through plasticity, with visual theory, in terms of cultural context. I'm interested in this link.
Robin Evans in his book The Projective Cast, discusses architecture and its representation through the notion of projection. The line which I found most suitable for my research was
"Composition, which is where the geometry of architecture is usually sought, may still for convenience be considered the crux of the matter, but it has no significance in and of itself. It obtains all of its value via the several types of projective, quasi-projective, or pseudo projective space that surround it, for it is only through these that it can be made available to perception." (xxxi)
My thesis hopes to work in the transitional zone between this statement and the scientific theory of perception. Can how we consume space be understood both as both?. To understand the system at play in the consumption of space, I will look at both cultural contexts and their manifestations as visual constructs aswell as probing at realising through the design of my building and its projections in my film an intuitive depiction of the neurological processes at work in perception.
The baroque aesthetic is not incidental, as I spoke of earlier when discussing Martin Jay's essay Scopic Regimes of Modernity, the baroque vision (I will try to prove 0r at least discuss) is most appropriate in representing our current media-rich landscape. I want to prove that the notion of the baroque, one of fractured, multiplicitous vision is indeed analogous to the modern / postmodern age experience of vision. That evershifting viewpoints and a return to an individual ego-centred world is best expressed through the principles of the baroque.
The use of anatomical existing building elements of the brain, tissue, neurons, arteries etc, to create this baroque architecture is based on the initial metaphor of the brain as the ultimate systems architecture for producing perception. It is within the architecture of this organ that all modes and constructs of vision and their subsequent representations comes from.
So, in a sense, the written thesis aims to question space perception through the means of it representation in a cultural context and to conclude / suggest how this defines our perception of space within our current time. The physical / practical design thesis works alongside this research to test and represent the theories in an analogous architecture. This architecture aims to represent our reliance on our learned cultural context in the consumption of space as well describing the system it implies in a visually understandable way.
Proposed work for end of project:
1. Large plan showing the route of the protagonist through the infinite Borges like library, the only parts drawn in detail are her route. This is to represent that the brain's architecture is formed by its use, through our experiences which demand certain processes using specific areas in it. This plan is in a sense only one of many that could be drawn during different stages of the protagonist life, but the one I will produce is obviously of her current position in time, one which although produced as a combination of previous experiences / memories is not meant to be read as combination of all from all times.
Piranesi's fragment drawing of ancient Rome
2. Series of smaller plans roughly A2 size which show slices through the brain building at different levels. The infinite nature of the building means that it can be read sectionally as wel
l as in plan to an endless level. These drawings will address, the systems I have identified in how we process visual information into perception (neurologically and culturally)
3. A section showing these relationships
4. A film which deals with the relationship between the systems of perception and the output of experience. In it as discussed previously, the protagonist moves through two distinct spaces - one the library which represents her processes of perception and secondly the 'real' space where she both receives the inputs and experiences the outputs. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, her experiences will be limited in this space, it will all take part in one room.
5. A series of details of the areas of the building
A booklet documenting the production of all of the above
The building and its life as a film is intended to explore this process, using the architecture as a definition of the structural systems, hierarchies and mechanisms at work.
But as I read and research more I realise that my real interest is in this representational process. The representational process of perception, the crossover between the theories of vision and the scientific evidence constantly emerging that shows the brain translates information and organises it in systems to produce our sense of perception.
The ongoing process of learning dictates how we perceive our surroundings. In the context of neuroscience, this is explained through plasticity, with visual theory, in terms of cultural context. I'm interested in this link.
Robin Evans in his book The Projective Cast, discusses architecture and its representation through the notion of projection. The line which I found most suitable for my research was
"Composition, which is where the geometry of architecture is usually sought, may still for convenience be considered the crux of the matter, but it has no significance in and of itself. It obtains all of its value via the several types of projective, quasi-projective, or pseudo projective space that surround it, for it is only through these that it can be made available to perception." (xxxi)
My thesis hopes to work in the transitional zone between this statement and the scientific theory of perception. Can how we consume space be understood both as both?. To understand the system at play in the consumption of space, I will look at both cultural contexts and their manifestations as visual constructs aswell as probing at realising through the design of my building and its projections in my film an intuitive depiction of the neurological processes at work in perception.
The baroque aesthetic is not incidental, as I spoke of earlier when discussing Martin Jay's essay Scopic Regimes of Modernity, the baroque vision (I will try to prove 0r at least discuss) is most appropriate in representing our current media-rich landscape. I want to prove that the notion of the baroque, one of fractured, multiplicitous vision is indeed analogous to the modern / postmodern age experience of vision. That evershifting viewpoints and a return to an individual ego-centred world is best expressed through the principles of the baroque.
The use of anatomical existing building elements of the brain, tissue, neurons, arteries etc, to create this baroque architecture is based on the initial metaphor of the brain as the ultimate systems architecture for producing perception. It is within the architecture of this organ that all modes and constructs of vision and their subsequent representations comes from.
So, in a sense, the written thesis aims to question space perception through the means of it representation in a cultural context and to conclude / suggest how this defines our perception of space within our current time. The physical / practical design thesis works alongside this research to test and represent the theories in an analogous architecture. This architecture aims to represent our reliance on our learned cultural context in the consumption of space as well describing the system it implies in a visually understandable way.
Proposed work for end of project:
1. Large plan showing the route of the protagonist through the infinite Borges like library, the only parts drawn in detail are her route. This is to represent that the brain's architecture is formed by its use, through our experiences which demand certain processes using specific areas in it. This plan is in a sense only one of many that could be drawn during different stages of the protagonist life, but the one I will produce is obviously of her current position in time, one which although produced as a combination of previous experiences / memories is not meant to be read as combination of all from all times.
Piranesi's fragment drawing of ancient Rome
2. Series of smaller plans roughly A2 size which show slices through the brain building at different levels. The infinite nature of the building means that it can be read sectionally as wel
l as in plan to an endless level. These drawings will address, the systems I have identified in how we process visual information into perception (neurologically and culturally)
3. A section showing these relationships
4. A film which deals with the relationship between the systems of perception and the output of experience. In it as discussed previously, the protagonist moves through two distinct spaces - one the library which represents her processes of perception and secondly the 'real' space where she both receives the inputs and experiences the outputs. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, her experiences will be limited in this space, it will all take part in one room.
5. A series of details of the areas of the building
A booklet documenting the production of all of the above
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Sunday, 22 February 2009
Lacanian interpretation of Perspective
I found an excellent, unpublished, student essay called Vision and Rationality: A Seminar in Art and Culture by Leslie K Cronin which deals with a number of the authors I am currently reading. She very clearly explains Lacan's take on perspective and finds him, like Jay, dissatisfied with the single point perspective model.
"Both Jacque Lacan and Martin Jay posited theoretical disadvantages to the construction of single point perspective paintings. These two theorists lead a drive to embrace anamorphosistic, baroque and modern art as the more productive and enhancing experiences for the viewing subject. According to Lacan, what the subject desires most is to be recognized as a distinct individual, unlike any other. The subject wants others to see her as she sees herself. This fundamental lack of true or real subjectivity drives the subject to work ceaselessly to shore up her constantly dissipating sense of selfhood. The subject ardently wants to establish her identity as a fixed thing, something constitutive of her being, but she simultaneously intuits that her subjectivity is not fixed. So she makes or acquires pictures, purchases objects and property, espouses or rejects values and ideals all in the name of "who she is"; all the while, the subject never consciously realizes how fragile, unstable and derivative her subjectivity truly is.
Lacan's notion of why we look at pictures starts with the gaze. The gaze is desire. Rather, the gaze is the tool of the desiring subject, what she sends out into the world to secure a sense of self or at least shore up her deficit of subjectivity. Lacan says that a subject's recognition of herself is dependent upon "misrecognition" or "meconnaissance" because the subject assumes its own concreteness and uniqueness. Prior to Lacan, the gaze was characterized as something a subject does to the objects in the world around her. Lacan, however, changes the terms entirely and speaks of visuality, which is something quite different from subjects gazing upon objects; Lacan's view of visuality and the gaze is much more complex--he speaks of gazing as a chiasmic function. He uses a diagram of two triangles superimposed upon one another to illustrate how the picture and the subject are both held within the matrix of the gaze and the subject of representation. Put more simply, when a subject masters a picture by gazing upon it, she is at the same time formulated by the picture. In other words, to achieve the goal of being recognized, the subject must become an object, seen and recognized by the very things she makes objects of.
Lacan believes that the subject gazing upon a single-point perspective painting, such as Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin (mentioned earlier in this essay), starts to see herself as the center of the universe. She regards the world and its objects from a choice vantage point; everything in her line of vision conforms to Brunelleschi's mathematics of sight. Mathematically-plotted pictures enable a way of seeing that seems at first to support the subject's notions of distinct and masterful selfhood. This rationalist perspective satisfies the subject's urge to see herself as fixed and complete until she contemplates the vanishing point. When, in her perusal of the picture, she encounters the vanishing point, she becomes troubled by the reciprocal relationship between subject and object. If her object recognizes her, as she indeed wishes it to, then it becomes unclear to her, symbolically speaking, whether she still occupies the vantage point or has become the vanishing point.
"From Lacan's point of view, rationalist or scientifically informed painting, despite the fact that it is apparently easy to see and digest, menaces the subject, forcing her into an endless series of psychological maneuvers to avoid confronting the nothingness that the picture's vanishing point shows her she is. Rationalist paintings provide the viewer with only two alternatives of being: master of the universe (at the vantage point) or cipher (at the vanishing point.) Each alternative fails to accurately encapsulate who the subject is. Lacan seems to propose that innovations to single-point perspectivalism, may offer the viewing subject an escape from the master/cipher straight jacket. Lacan says that paintings are a trap for the gaze, and once trapped, the gaze is temporarily calmed and pacified. This tamed gaze or "dompte regard" gives the viewer rest from the athletics of the master/cipher dichotomy. Caravagio presented innovative art to his patrons in the church five hundred years ago when he created paintings that broke with single point perspective in favor of picture planes containing foreshortened space and subtly engineered multiple perspectives. Gazing upon a Caravaggio, the subject is no longer forced into the inherently false role of master of the universe, nor does identification with the vanishing point annihilate her. Instead, she may adopt any or many of the positions that the picture plane offers. In this respect, art that departs from Renaissance notions of single point perspective constitute a constructive difficulty for the viewer, one that allows the viewer to see herself more honestly, as a split and multiple subject."
Saturday, 21 February 2009
Vision and its link to the Philosophy and Beliefs of its Time
The sense of sight is arguably the most prominent and valued one in our society. I read a very interesting essay by Martin Jay called Scopic Regimes of Modernity from his book Vision and Visuality which explores this notion by breaking down of visual experience into three key types of visual subcultures (scopic regimes) which have emerged since the Renaissance. He argues that although Cartesian perspectivalism dominates, it is more accurate to hold all three in mind to understand vision. “the scopic regime of modernity may best be understood as a contested terrain, rather than a harmoniously integrated complex of visual theories and practices” (p.4).
What I personally find most interesting about this essay is that in each instance, the context of the historical timeframe that each theory arises from seems inextricably linked to it. This throws up an interesting question - does the nature of vision change depending on when we live and experience culture? Also, if our vision is changed - thus the space we perceive too is altered, laying out the final question, what is our contemporary space? Can I use the critical techniques of the essay or ones like it to decifer a notion of vision for 2009 and what is the space it perceives?
This question brings me back to my interest in the ideas explored and developed by neuroscience. Because of the brain's plasticity, the individual's experience shapes their perception of space and reality. The individuals experience is among others shaped by the era they are part of.
But back to Jay.
The Baptism of Christ by Leonardo da Vinci (1472 - 1475)
1. Cartesian perspectivalism:
Otherwise known as one point perspective which came from southern European Renaissance ideas, it exemplified the Renaissance endeavor to incorporate science into all aspects of life. Although the word Cartesian stems from its association to René Descartes, Jay sees Cartesian perspectivalism as being contrary to Descartes philosophy . Jay quotes Richard Rorty from his 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979) "In the Cartesian model the intellect inspects entities modeled on retinal images...In Descartes' conception - the one that became the basis for 'modern' epistemology - it is representations which are in the mind."
Jay finds fault in a number of areas with this method of vision, which assumes a fixed and singular eye / viewing point. Jay argues that that both viewer and painter are disembodied, writing that "the bodies of the painter and the viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye." It is unnatural, not accounting for normal binocular vision or the dynamic, saccadic motion of the human eye. He writes
"In Norman Bryson's terms, it followed the logic of the Gaze rather than the Glance, thus producing a visual take that was eternalised, reduced to one"point of view" and disembodied."(p.7)
He also notes that this de-eroticises the art: "The moment of erotic projection in vision - what St Augustine had anxiously condemned as "occular desire" - was lost as the bodies of the painter and viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye." (p.8)
The Music Lesson by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75)
2. Baconian perspectivalism
As a sub group of Cartesian perspectivalism occuring in Northern Europe, in exemplified by the Dutch 17th century painters like Vermeer, in which the eye of the observer ceases , the frame is removed and the work is based around the objects existing independently of a viewer.
"The projection is, one might say, viewed from nowhere. Nor is it to be looked through. It assumes a flat working surface." (p.15)
The emphasis is on the fragmentary nature of reality, "attention to many small things versus a few large ones; light reflected off objects versus objects modelled by light and shadow; the surface of objects; their colours and textures, dealt with rather than their placement in a legible space..." (p.13 - quoting Svetlana Alpers. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth century p.44) Modern day photography and film are described as being the descendants of these method of vision.
The Hermitage Winter Palace, St Petersburg by Rastrelli
3. Baroque Vision:
Jay is most interested and excited by this model of vision which he desribes as "more radical alternative". Although introduces 'the baroque' by its conventionally understood context in the 17th century and its links to the Catholic counter Reformation, he goes on to state that "it may also be possible to see it as a permanent, if often repressed, visual possibility throughout the entire modern era."
Using the writing of the French philosopher Christine Buci-Glucksmann, La Raison Baroque of 1984 and La folie du voir of 1986, he sets up this third model as the one most relevant and appropriate to the reality of vision in the modern age. There are many comparisions to be made in the way in which he describes this vision with the writings of the deconstructivists such as Derrida. He writes, "the baroque self-consciously revels in the contradictions between surface and depth, disparaging as a result any attempt to reduce the multiplicity of visual spaces into any one coherant essence."
He himself compares it to other philosophical systems: "Leibniz's pluralism of monadic viewpoints, Pascal's meditations on paradox, and the Counter Reformation mystic's submission to vertiginous experiences of rapture might all be seen as related to baroque vision."
What I personally find most interesting about this essay is that in each instance, the context of the historical timeframe that each theory arises from seems inextricably linked to it. This throws up an interesting question - does the nature of vision change depending on when we live and experience culture? Also, if our vision is changed - thus the space we perceive too is altered, laying out the final question, what is our contemporary space? Can I use the critical techniques of the essay or ones like it to decifer a notion of vision for 2009 and what is the space it perceives?
This question brings me back to my interest in the ideas explored and developed by neuroscience. Because of the brain's plasticity, the individual's experience shapes their perception of space and reality. The individuals experience is among others shaped by the era they are part of.
But back to Jay.
The Baptism of Christ by Leonardo da Vinci (1472 - 1475)1. Cartesian perspectivalism:
Otherwise known as one point perspective which came from southern European Renaissance ideas, it exemplified the Renaissance endeavor to incorporate science into all aspects of life. Although the word Cartesian stems from its association to René Descartes, Jay sees Cartesian perspectivalism as being contrary to Descartes philosophy . Jay quotes Richard Rorty from his 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979) "In the Cartesian model the intellect inspects entities modeled on retinal images...In Descartes' conception - the one that became the basis for 'modern' epistemology - it is representations which are in the mind."
Jay finds fault in a number of areas with this method of vision, which assumes a fixed and singular eye / viewing point. Jay argues that that both viewer and painter are disembodied, writing that "the bodies of the painter and the viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye." It is unnatural, not accounting for normal binocular vision or the dynamic, saccadic motion of the human eye. He writes
"In Norman Bryson's terms, it followed the logic of the Gaze rather than the Glance, thus producing a visual take that was eternalised, reduced to one"point of view" and disembodied."(p.7)
He also notes that this de-eroticises the art: "The moment of erotic projection in vision - what St Augustine had anxiously condemned as "occular desire" - was lost as the bodies of the painter and viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye." (p.8)
The Music Lesson by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75)
2. Baconian perspectivalism
As a sub group of Cartesian perspectivalism occuring in Northern Europe, in exemplified by the Dutch 17th century painters like Vermeer, in which the eye of the observer ceases , the frame is removed and the work is based around the objects existing independently of a viewer.
"The projection is, one might say, viewed from nowhere. Nor is it to be looked through. It assumes a flat working surface." (p.15)
The emphasis is on the fragmentary nature of reality, "attention to many small things versus a few large ones; light reflected off objects versus objects modelled by light and shadow; the surface of objects; their colours and textures, dealt with rather than their placement in a legible space..." (p.13 - quoting Svetlana Alpers. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth century p.44) Modern day photography and film are described as being the descendants of these method of vision.
The Hermitage Winter Palace, St Petersburg by Rastrelli3. Baroque Vision:
Jay is most interested and excited by this model of vision which he desribes as "more radical alternative". Although introduces 'the baroque' by its conventionally understood context in the 17th century and its links to the Catholic counter Reformation, he goes on to state that "it may also be possible to see it as a permanent, if often repressed, visual possibility throughout the entire modern era."
Using the writing of the French philosopher Christine Buci-Glucksmann, La Raison Baroque of 1984 and La folie du voir of 1986, he sets up this third model as the one most relevant and appropriate to the reality of vision in the modern age. There are many comparisions to be made in the way in which he describes this vision with the writings of the deconstructivists such as Derrida. He writes, "the baroque self-consciously revels in the contradictions between surface and depth, disparaging as a result any attempt to reduce the multiplicity of visual spaces into any one coherant essence."
He himself compares it to other philosophical systems: "Leibniz's pluralism of monadic viewpoints, Pascal's meditations on paradox, and the Counter Reformation mystic's submission to vertiginous experiences of rapture might all be seen as related to baroque vision."
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Rorschach Ink blots
I realised while looking at my sketch plan of my library that it bore a striking resemblance to the Rorschach ink blot drawings that are used in psychoanalysis. Perhaps if I am using the Lacanian / Freudian interpretation of buildings as metaphors for the human personality and am allocating levels of the building to represent different levels of consciousness, levels of ego or levels of reality and fantasy, the ink blot shapes could define the various strata through the building, each ambiguous shape made as one which bears a resemblance in some way to its true function.
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