patternsthatconnect

Sir Isaac Newton’s experiments with prisms, where white light passing through a prism emerges in a spectrum of colours like a rainbow led him to conclude that “Colours in the Object are nothing but a Disposition to reflect this or that sort of Rays more copiously than the rest.” In other words, light is composed of different rays (we might now say different frequencies), a given surface reflects certain rays and absorbs others. If it reflects low frequencies and absorbs high, then its colour will be at the red end of the spectrum whereas if it reflects high frequencies and absorbs low then it will be towards the blue end of the spectrum. However, a study of simultaneous colour contrasts shows that the “same colour” will look very different depending on its context. So “pattern of reflectance = colour of surface” is not the whole story, there is the ‘subjective’ side of colour construction to take into account.

Donald D Hoffman, in his book Visual Intelligence shows just how complex a process this is, and suggests some of the rules we use to construct the colours we see. I borrowed one of his experiments/demonstrations (which he credits to Christoph Redies and Lothar Spillmann)  for my painting Glow Grid, where coloured discs are constructed by the viewer:

and more recently I have been playing with colour mixing and wondering about how much of this takes place on the canvas (out there) and how much takes place optically (in here).

In the New Testament (of all places) we read that “the light of the body is the eye” emphasising not the objective (out there) source of light and colour (as perhaps J.M.W. Turner did when he said “the Sun is God”) but the subjective “in here” construction of it.

I saw this Blog the other day

Hi The Art Gallery is over.  I still feel compelled to paint.  Over the next four days I will be sharing four new peices that have arisen since the show.  Again, each will have somewhat of a synopsis but no real explaination.  I have also put up a ‘Gallery’ in the Art section of this site.  Enjoy:) … Read More

via Love, Art & Fear

and then I started wondering about how it works (the image that is, not the blog)

Am I right in thinking that it relies on

1. the closeness of the lines near where the ‘circles’ appear to throb (close but not converging),
2. that the repeated motif is not quite symmetrical, and
3. most of all, on tonal contrast?

What would happen if you loosened the closeness of the lines, introduced colour and reduced the tonal contrast?

How brilliant is this? (a reblog of Michael’s blog, that quotes Richard Wiseman’s blog…) You just click on ‘Read More’ and follow the instruction to follow the instructions in the image. It only takes a few seconds to do, and I think you will love it when you actually do it. See if you can resist smiling!

This was published on Richard Wiseman’s blog today. It’s your own personal rainbow! Follow the instructions in the image. … Read More

via Michael’s Blog

I saw this wonderful blog post recently on optical illusions. It’s like a brief survey of three different types of illusion. Some interest me a lot more than others. I have my doubts about whether illusion  is really the best word, especially if we allow the suggestion that there is a real out there that we misinterpret. I don’t think that’s it. Anyway, check out the first three that come under the category ‘Physiological Illusions’.

Have you ever heard of Optical Illusion? Optical Illusion is also known as the visual illusion. Illusion occurs when we observe things, our brain perceive images that are different from the reality. When our eyes are “illusioned”, they send the wrong information to the brain that is different from the actual thing. There are three different kinds of optical illusions. literal optical illusion, physiological illusion, and cognitive illusions. Lite … Read More

via SHUFFLE

Joel was right! some of us need help to see optical effects. In my recent blog I asked viewers to look at a painting and to note what they saw. I then brought their attention to the subjective formation of white discs. I added a poll to find out how many people saw the white discs without being helped, how many saw them as a result of being helped and whether anyone was unable to see the white discs even after having been directed towards them

When I last looked  we were getting something close to a 50/5o split between “I saw with aid” and “I saw without aid” (with 14% claiming  not to have seen the white discs at all).

I know the research would be much more conclusive with 420 or 4,2000 participants, rather than the 42 that have actually taken part so far. However, if these results are anything like typical of the general population, I suggest they show that there is a role for curators to help us to see. I have often been suspicious of labelling works of art in galleries because the label (a linguistic filtering process) could get in the way of the primary experience (pre-linguistic) of the viewer. Yet, we have seen that helping us to observe what’s there is helpful for something like 50% of us.

I suggest that, in looking at art, we differentiate between the three ‘stages’ of viewing: 1)observation, 2)interpretation and 3) judgement. I could argue that curators more readily help us to do 2 and 3 and that 1 is a more ethical space to occupy.

Oh! And for those who claim not to be able to see the white discs, this is where to look:

Marked to give you an idea - you won't see them where I have drawn round them, but if you look in the corresponding places elsewhere on the grid, then you will, no doubt, see them

My son Joel suggested that some people tend only to see optical effects when someone else brings them to their attention. Will you join me in an experiment?

Look at this painting and note what you see, especially noticing the optical effects.

Glow Grid: abbiedawn, 13 05 11, Acrylic on Canvas, 61cm x 61 cm

Now, did you see the white discs in the middle of the squares, secondary in intensity to the coloured discs, or is it only now I have mentioned it that you can see them?

Please let me have your answer by using this poll

Thanks for your help.

I got the following little exercise from a paper by Donald D. Hoffman. It is possible to see one of two cubes here. (You can see them both, but not at the same time.)

The subjective Necker cube (Bradley and Petry, 1977)

One has corner A in front (cube A), and one has corner B in front (cube B).

Which of the two cubes do you see first?

Whichever one you see first, note that you’ve seen it, and then allow it to shift, so that you see the other one. Amazing, isn’t it? (Maybe it’s childish of me to get so fascinated by this and to keep on shifting from one to the other just for fun.)

If there were two of you viewing this figure together, one of you could be viewing cube A and one of you could be viewing cube B, thus seeing a different cube even though you are looking at the same thing. Then, when it shifts, one could turn to the other and say “I’m seeing the same one as you now” and the other reply “no I am not seeing that one any more, I am seeing the other one”. You could continue to look at the same thing together and both continue to see a different cube, even after it has shifted.

Now the important questions: where is cube A when you are viewing cube B? and what are the implications for our everyday perception of the world?

…according to John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St, Clair the territory isn’t even the territory, (Whispering in the Wind page 25). They use the term First Access (FA) for the point where we gain access to information about the world through our sensory systems. The information received at FA is already a map, though we are accustomed to think of it as the territory. The vast majority of what is out there never reaches our senses, and the information that does reach us is also transformed. FA is the product of these transforms or mappings. Grinder/St Clair use the abbreviation F1 to refer to the set of mappings that occur before FA.

Then there are the linguistic transforms that take place after FA, the mappings that we usually refer to when, with Alfred Korzybski, we say “the map is not the territory”. Grinder/St Clair use the term F2 to refer to these transforms, our linguistically mediated mental maps.

It seems to me that abstract painting is particularly well placed to explore the pre-linguistic, F1 transforms or mappings or representations, that occur between the events of the real world and our visual perceptions (It can and does also explore F2 mappings as does figurative painting).

Glow Grid: abbiedawn, 13 05 11, Acrylic on Canvas, 61cm x 61 cm

The coloured discs you really see in this painting are not out there in the external world, they are not on the surface of the painting. Neither are the 49 bright white discs that appear in the centres of the squares (especially when you look slightly sideways). They are part of the F1 transforms, mappings or representations that take place between the world out there and FA. I suggest that whilst that’s so for everything you see including the canvas, knowing that these colour/shapes exist only in our  F1 mappings shows us something about that mapping process. I think the painting is helping us to model colour.

Something else about these subjective/colour shapes that intrigues me is that we see the discs as perfect circles. Although the drawing is inaccurate we see the discs as if they were accurately rendered… your eye is more accurate than my hand. Your representation or map is, in this respect, more accurate than the territory.

I am thoroughly enjoying the writing of Donald D. Hoffman

you could say I am a big fan

He writes about visual perception and how we construct the world in which we live. No room for gods in this world view?

Donald D. Hoffman is a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science, University of California Irvine, California. If you are like me, you may be a little tired of the Steven Pinker neuroscientists and their broad claims at having discovered the Soul or God in the human brain. Dr. Hoffman makes a clear case here as to what neuroscience knows and doesn’t know. Debates between theists and atheists often hinge, naturally enough, on advances in co … Read More

via Paying Attention To The Sky

Donald D. Hoffman‘s book Visual Intelligence has many wonderful things in it. Here’s one little experiment he says you can do on a napkin and impress your friends.

You start with red lines

and then add black lines as extensions of the red ones (better if the pens are the same tip size , unlike mine)

where does that glowing red disc come from?

(if you don’t see it at first look away slightly or reduce the image )

where does that glowing red disc come from?

even my son Luke must be able to see this one!

And again the question becomes how much of what we see is really out there and how much of it do we construct? An important question, not only for art and science. (Hoffman has some interesting answers in this article .)

He also has some great photos on Flickr here’s a link