Transforming States in Visual Perspective

In this paper I want to discuss that we are hard wired for what we see. This hard wiring allows us to negotiate our daily living with the material things that surround us; we understand that when we place a cup of coffee on the table it won’t drop to the floor. But we know there is more to the world than what we see directly. There is the corner we can’t see round but a periscope can take us there. Likewise there are numerous artefacts/instruments that describe and show us things in the world that we can’t see, some of these being familiar, the majority will claim to have a scientific base, some I will briefly describe later.
We also have anomalies and understand that people such as synesthetes will see things differently to the usual consensus. The slide here, one of optical illusion shows peripherial drift, although not fully understood it is thought that the high intensity of vision in the central sensitive fovae area gives way to the broader area of the macula and then to peripheral vision as the eye tries to gain control of what it is seeing. I will also touch on descriptions of how different species see. This is to question that is there more to seeing than our visual cortex allows and that science has in part led the way to further descriptions of seeing. I will look at now how the foundation for this has been laid.

To begin, mathematical physics not only describes a world we can see but also one that we cannot see. Mathematical descriptions of a world space we cannot see, have been developing since the beginning of the 18th century. Originally barely understood, and understood to only a few who knew higher algebraic symbolism, mathematicians, artists, philosophers attempted to show this new unseen world. New terminology developed to name and describe this new unfolding world. A world first disclosed by Riemann and later by Einstein. Passage of time has now given familiarity to this new terminology and language of how these states are described. As they filter into the usage of everyday language they conjure visual perceptions or illusions within us; ‘quantum leap’ has become a familiar colloquial term. Prior to this, art had moved forward with 3D linear perspective in the renaissance and left mathematical sciences grappling with Euclidean space, now mathematics was in higher dimensionality, in hyperbolic space or spacetime. But spacetime in reality remains unseen.

As science and maths have moved forward with instrumentation to shed a different understanding of the world so has art. A simple optical device used by both science and art is the Black Mirror or Claude Mirror, polarizing light for scientists and reducing light for artists. For the artist it removes the dazzle of the sun or the rawness of a scene as the image is absorbed by the mirror. The Claude Glass has been used as a supplement to the eye of the artist by modifying natural lighting and modifying colour, giving opacity to the scene reflected. As an optical device because of its convexity this tinted mirror gives a view closer to curvilinear perspective.

Included with different instruments are photographic methods used in science which have yielded results and show a different view of the world. The well known photographic sequences first introduced by Eadweard Muybridge, have been perfected and still used as high-speed photography with effect today showing detail of movement that cannot be detected by the eye.
Schlieren photography shows the pattern of air flow and makes visible hot or turbulent air, a technique that relies on the change of the refractive index and records change in air density. Kirlian photography produces ethereal, almost ghostly images. Where a glowing coronal discharge is created, similar to the phenomenon of St. Elmo’s Fire. The shape and colour of the discharge depends on many factors, notably moisture in the air.

Still in the light wave end of the spectrum a lens of short focal length is used in the light microscope and creates an enlarged real image, dyes or the use of polarised light especially in mineralogy and crystal science make structures in thin specimens more visible under this microscope.
At the lower end of the spectrum infrared thermography is a technique for visualising the heat given off by all objects. Part of the heat lost by an object is in the form of long-wavelength or ‘thermal’ infrared light. Invisible to human eyes, this thermal radiation may be detected by cameras fitted with special electronic chips.

Using different wave lengths the scanning electron microscope (SEM) takes us into a microscopic world beyond the reach of visible light. Electrons from a metal filament are collected and focussed, just like light waves, into a narrow beam.
Science also allows us to see with sound waves and ultrasound images, developed as a spin-off from naval sonar devices, uses very high-pitched sound waves to look inside the body.

Looking at the optics in different species goldfish and some species of monkeys, have red, blue and two green cones.
Spiders, have four pairs of eyes for very close vision.
The Elephant Hawkmoth, a night flier has cells that reflect light back again across cells to magnify the little light there is in dark conditions.
Insects, flies have compound vision, similar in surface to the digital surface of a compact disc. This complex visual system has a simple brain where as our simple vision system as stated by Richard Dawking in the Blind Watchmaker has a complex brain behind it.

The examples of man made optical instruments and optics in different species are numerous and the few outlined here are to add weight to the question of is there a way of seeing more, or a way seeing new spaces describe in science.

Marcus Novak who is developing his own scaffold of language for this new space and says ‘space is no longer innocent’ has coined terms like ‘liquid architecture’ and ‘enframing’ and viewing his trans-architecture as an expression of the fourth dimension states,

“Throughout the twentieth century, the fourth dimension found many interpretations and influenced many thinkers and artists, but few architects. Most efforts were impressionistic, however, with little actual mathematical underpinning. Even when those efforts show a deeper mathematical understanding, the inherent difficulty of having any direct experience of four-dimensional phenomena has, until now, placed severe limits on what could be imagined. And, even when the imagination has overcome such limits, there has been no sense in which the fruit of such thought experiments could approach everyday experience.”

And goes on to state;

“The ongoing transition from energy to information has altered these conditions. We have discovered space within information, free of the limitations of the physical world and amenable to explorations of alternate laws. Within this space we have created a new public realm in search of an architecture appropriate to its nature. What seems natural to this space demonstrates many of the features of higher dimensional, curved space.”

Tamara Munzner at Stamford University has visualised this new space of information on the web using cone trees and in her work has shown how this curved space is used as hyperbolic space.

Installation art addresses the space in which it is seen and like unfolding manifolds turns the inside out and the out side in, as in Amidst by Susan Trangmar where projection in a circular space creates an illusion of a wood. Although an artificial construction in an artificial space this has taken away the common standard of measure to film where none exists.

As practiced based in film I will endeavour to deconstruct the architecture of the frame and the frame surface. This is in part to release the film projection from the linear surface within the frame in a controlled and measured way. From there I will be specifically looking at the coherence and non-coherence of the projected moving image and recording it. WMF 06.07.06

Illusions rendered in hard materials using CAD/CAM. It is thought that illusions omit required information giving the brain ambiguous messages.

Index