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Just as an example - here is something I wrote for a magic blog (boy, am I confused) - I didn't even read this myself - but it is an example.
Seeing
13 March 2008
14:03
It often surprises me how visually illiterate we are as a society.
As an artist and an art educator, this appears painfully obvious to me.
Is this not odd?
We experience the world through our five senses. These senses do not represent a reality that exists independently. What we understand as 'being real' is a creative assumption carried out in our minds in response to stimulus acting on our senses.
'The road you describe is not the road you can walk upon'.
We have no empirical evidence that what is 'out there' actually exists at all.
It is certainly true that the tree you are seeing in your mind now (that I mention it) it different to the tree I am seeing in my mind.
If we stand outside on a clear night - we can both see the moon, and we can communicate to each other that this is the case. However, who is to say that we are seeing the same thing. I am taller than you - no I am - so I will see the moon from an infinitesimally different viewpoint - so we do not experience the same reality.
I like the moon, it fills me with a sense of pagan wonder.
You are a flat headed realist who sees a large lump of rock and dust.
Try this game.
The sensory balloon game.
If you were to develop a strange illness where one, by one, your sense were lost to you, which would be the first to go.
Now, don't make ant rash decisions here. Think it through. What are the pros (there will be some) and the cons? How would your life change as a result of the loss of this window onto the experienced world?
Got rid of one?................
Smell?
Really?
I hope you can still enjoy your food!
So, which is the next sensory organ to suffer untimely collapse. Again, thing it through. Just what would a world without touch be like?
I think that you get the idea......
So, one by one, out go your senses.
Which one is left?
Unless you are consciously trying to be either clever, or difficult (and both states are essentially the same), you will have said 'sight'.
You will have recognised that sight appears to give us more information about the world we perceive, you may also have concluded that it gives us more sensual value (although this may be disputed by a musician, or a cook, or a perfumer, or a nymphomaniac).
Before I leave this game behind and move onto where I am trying to get to - try this final addition to the balloon game. Try playing it in reverse.
Start with the five senses, as before.
Consider, how these senses relay information to us from the outside world. What similarities and differences are there?
Now - think which sense you would add.
What sense would you create to enhance your understanding of the world and add value to your experience?
(this is a very difficult thing to do, as you will need to leave the five senses behind and think 'outside of the matrix' - thinking about your own thoughts and perceptions is fraught with paradox).
Onwards............
Another question: If you did not choose Sight to make it through to the grand final, why not? What were your arguments and counter arguments?
If you did choose sight, ask the same question.
By now I am going to assume that you are all with me, and agree that sight is the most important sense. It may well not be, it may only appear to you to be - it doesn't matter. If you are in disagreement - you are a difficult and cantankerous old fool (in my opinion), you may as well go away and sniff somewhere else....... No, stay anyway, hear me through.........
So if sight is so important, why do we seem to despise it so?
Where is my evidence that we do?
One only has to look at a cultures educational system to see where it's priorities are. Also, would we allow our world to become so goddam ugly, if we lived in it as visually literate beings.
Or try this - take someone around an art gallery and see how long it is before they ask where the cafe or the gift shop is.
Or, create a piece of aesthetically pleasing piece of art yourself, show it to ten people, and see how many of them say 'that's nice', in a sort of disassociated way (watch also for a miasmatic film form over their eyes.
Or, ask someone to describe their journey from their home to where you are - do they talk abstractly (I walked down the road and saw a car and a tree behind the tree was a dog having a crap. Or, do they talk concretely in visual language (shapes, colours, contrasts of light/dark, textures, patterns etc.)?
We are programmed and conditioned to experience the world in a rather blinkered, abstract way.
What are we missing?
This seems mad! Why does it happen?
It is a cultural decision.
What evidence do I have?
Ans: some cultures are more visually literate than others.
In the a western technological culture we see truth in abstract thinking patterns. For example, number and language.
1+1=2. Yes, but 1 what and one what and two what?
Pipe - pick that word up and smoke it.
We see truth as being described by these abstract patterns of thought. We know that 1+1=2, we know that goblin's don't exist.
Abstract though is empirical, and therefore good.
So we develop a belief system that is based upon the belief that abstract thinking is true. By the way, science, philosophy, mathematics or any other form that we may have of describing and understanding what we perceive is just as much as belief system as religion, mysticism, consumerism, Marxism, Fascism (please add your own ism here), art, culture or goblins.
Further more, we distrust non abstract, or concrete modes of understanding and experiencing. Again, a quick look at our societies values as reflected in our education system will substantiate this.
Coming back to visual literacy. You may well say to me -
'But I do see, and vision is very important to me. I would hate to be blind'.
But what do you see and to what level?
Yes, we need to see the car that is hurtling towards us, or the smile on our loved ones face (I am making an assumption with this last example). We see a series of abstractions and generalisations that we can produce a 'best fit' with a pre-existing abstract pattern.
'Watch out, you almost got run over!'
'Hi honey, I'm home!'
But we do not really see.
What was the quality of light that reflected off the red bonnet of the car? Just how many reds were there? What was totally unique about what I saw?
When I was at art college (supposedly a highly developed visual being), a had an argument with a fellow student over the merits of the artist Rothko.
I thought he was rubbish and made a distinctly (visually) ill-informed and arrogant claim to that end.
I was challenged to a test - to go and sit in-front of the painting for 1 hour - and say nothing (I would now add to this 'and not think in verbal or other abstract forms'), then see if I still held the same opinion.
Needless to say, I lost the bet and evolved.
Remarkably, it was the first time in my life that I had actually seen anything.
Here are two related questions:
If we are visually illiterate, what are the implications of all of this?
If we were visually literate and experiences the world through none abstract patterns, how would the world (and our world) be different?
I am not going to give any 'answers' here, as there may not be any - if we can unhook ourselves from abstract logic, we may not need any answers anyway. All I, or anyone could offer is an opinion based on the internal models we have been (largely) given.
There is a real danger that if we all are so abstract, we will see the two questions above as a code - i.e. When we understand the abstract meaning of the arrangement of words, we can 'move on'. We may not feel the need to actually think - someone will be along shortly with the answer (as is often the case in a society that sees thinking as a subversive activity).
Actually, thinking about these questions will give you far more real information than I (or anyone else) could.
When you have given this some thought, you can actually write the conclusion to this essay, and it will have more meaning than if I had written it.
However, I would like to finish off with a couple of interesting exercises.
1. Take a simple object and look at it for as long as you are prepared to. Do not think! Just look.
Let us assume that you are looking at an apple. Dammit, there, I have just gone and labled it into an abstract (and pre-existing) category. Well, look at it without seeing something you can call 'an apple' - just let your eyes rest on what you are looking at - let all preconceptions melt away.
Look for at least 20mins.
Tell me, what colour is it?
Rest your mind and eyes - do not analyse - do daydream(another and highly subversive social activity). What happens?
2. Now, put the object down amongst other objects (oh and put them on a larger object). Try and see them holistically. By that I mean, do not see them as individual objects, but a collection of interlocking shapes, colours, tones etc. Look at the shapes and spaces between the objects, see them as being just as important. Look for at least 20mins. What happens?
Get a pencil and draw it. What happens?
3. Look at a group of 'things' in the context of a bigger 'thing'. As if you come from another planet. You have never seen any of this before. Don't try to 'work it out'. Just look at it.
Look for at least 20mins. What happens?
Get a pencil and draw it. What happens?
4. Look at the same 'things' - This is a nice one to do when you are outside on a nice summer day (but anything will work). Remind yourself that you cannot actually see any of the objects. You can only see them because light is reflecting off them. This is obviously the case, for if there was a sudden and complete blackout, you would not see anything. This would not be because someone just took all the stuff away. It is because the light got look away. Remind yourself that the 'apple' only looks red because a certain spectrum of colour is reflecting off the surface, whereas other parts of the spectrum are absorbed. It is not red, things really aren't as simple as that.
Notice how the light is not in discrete 'chunks' which fall of discrete objects. Rather, look at how it is the same light that unifies what you see.
Do this exercise for as long as it takes for you to stop seeing individual objects. Do this exercise until you can clearly 'not see' the objects, but 'can see' the light on the surface of the objects.
Repeat this exercise as many times as needed until this is the only way you see.
Now, go to an Art Gallery - no, not the one where people gawp gormlessly at a cow in a tank - go look at, let's say, an Impressionist painting. Can you understand it more deeply?
Now go and paint.
5. Get a photograph (can be of anything, but nothing too simple).
(a) Describe the image to one person using these rules: you can only name 'things' abstractly. You are not allowed to describe what you actually see. Gettit? The best way to achieve this is for you to look at the image - remember what you see - put it away and describe simply the things that you can remember. Now get the subject of your experiment to draw/paint what you have described.
(b) Describe the same image to a second person using an opposite set of rules. By this I mean you cannot name or label anything - you cannot say it is 'an apple'. You have to describe the act of seeing. What you perceive. If you had landed from another planet, how would you describe it? You can talk in general impressions, about how what you see affects you, as well as the shapes and colours and light and how all of this stuff interrelates. By the way, you will not find this easy - but that is exactly why you need to do it! Think of the repercussions of the alternative fergodsake!
Now, get your subject to draw/paint as you describe.
What happens?
Which is the more valid painting? Which painting expresses best your experience of perception?
6. Now do the same exercise - only this time describe to yourself and you paint. There, you are now an artist!
7. Look at an object, until you no longer see it. Now, what are you left with?
Now I will finish with one more experiment. It is not as powerful as the others, but the dissadvantage of the other exercises is that you will not do them! This is a great pity, but I know, yeah, you have so much to do. And these things that you have to do, they are so important.
So here we go.
8. Look at an object long enough to see it - now close your eyes and attempt to see the object as clearly as you can. Is it possible to see it as clearly with your eyes closed as it is with your eyes open?
Seeing
13 March 2008
14:03
It often surprises me how visually illiterate we are as a society.
As an artist and an art educator, this appears painfully obvious to me.
Is this not odd?
We experience the world through our five senses. These senses do not represent a reality that exists independently. What we understand as 'being real' is a creative assumption carried out in our minds in response to stimulus acting on our senses.
'The road you describe is not the road you can walk upon'.
We have no empirical evidence that what is 'out there' actually exists at all.
It is certainly true that the tree you are seeing in your mind now (that I mention it) it different to the tree I am seeing in my mind.
If we stand outside on a clear night - we can both see the moon, and we can communicate to each other that this is the case. However, who is to say that we are seeing the same thing. I am taller than you - no I am - so I will see the moon from an infinitesimally different viewpoint - so we do not experience the same reality.
I like the moon, it fills me with a sense of pagan wonder.
You are a flat headed realist who sees a large lump of rock and dust.
Try this game.
The sensory balloon game.
If you were to develop a strange illness where one, by one, your sense were lost to you, which would be the first to go.
Now, don't make ant rash decisions here. Think it through. What are the pros (there will be some) and the cons? How would your life change as a result of the loss of this window onto the experienced world?
Got rid of one?................
Smell?
Really?
I hope you can still enjoy your food!
So, which is the next sensory organ to suffer untimely collapse. Again, thing it through. Just what would a world without touch be like?
I think that you get the idea......
So, one by one, out go your senses.
Which one is left?
Unless you are consciously trying to be either clever, or difficult (and both states are essentially the same), you will have said 'sight'.
You will have recognised that sight appears to give us more information about the world we perceive, you may also have concluded that it gives us more sensual value (although this may be disputed by a musician, or a cook, or a perfumer, or a nymphomaniac).
Before I leave this game behind and move onto where I am trying to get to - try this final addition to the balloon game. Try playing it in reverse.
Start with the five senses, as before.
Consider, how these senses relay information to us from the outside world. What similarities and differences are there?
Now - think which sense you would add.
What sense would you create to enhance your understanding of the world and add value to your experience?
(this is a very difficult thing to do, as you will need to leave the five senses behind and think 'outside of the matrix' - thinking about your own thoughts and perceptions is fraught with paradox).
Onwards............
Another question: If you did not choose Sight to make it through to the grand final, why not? What were your arguments and counter arguments?
If you did choose sight, ask the same question.
By now I am going to assume that you are all with me, and agree that sight is the most important sense. It may well not be, it may only appear to you to be - it doesn't matter. If you are in disagreement - you are a difficult and cantankerous old fool (in my opinion), you may as well go away and sniff somewhere else....... No, stay anyway, hear me through.........
So if sight is so important, why do we seem to despise it so?
Where is my evidence that we do?
One only has to look at a cultures educational system to see where it's priorities are. Also, would we allow our world to become so goddam ugly, if we lived in it as visually literate beings.
Or try this - take someone around an art gallery and see how long it is before they ask where the cafe or the gift shop is.
Or, create a piece of aesthetically pleasing piece of art yourself, show it to ten people, and see how many of them say 'that's nice', in a sort of disassociated way (watch also for a miasmatic film form over their eyes.
Or, ask someone to describe their journey from their home to where you are - do they talk abstractly (I walked down the road and saw a car and a tree behind the tree was a dog having a crap. Or, do they talk concretely in visual language (shapes, colours, contrasts of light/dark, textures, patterns etc.)?
We are programmed and conditioned to experience the world in a rather blinkered, abstract way.
What are we missing?
This seems mad! Why does it happen?
It is a cultural decision.
What evidence do I have?
Ans: some cultures are more visually literate than others.
In the a western technological culture we see truth in abstract thinking patterns. For example, number and language.
1+1=2. Yes, but 1 what and one what and two what?
Pipe - pick that word up and smoke it.
We see truth as being described by these abstract patterns of thought. We know that 1+1=2, we know that goblin's don't exist.
Abstract though is empirical, and therefore good.
So we develop a belief system that is based upon the belief that abstract thinking is true. By the way, science, philosophy, mathematics or any other form that we may have of describing and understanding what we perceive is just as much as belief system as religion, mysticism, consumerism, Marxism, Fascism (please add your own ism here), art, culture or goblins.
Further more, we distrust non abstract, or concrete modes of understanding and experiencing. Again, a quick look at our societies values as reflected in our education system will substantiate this.
Coming back to visual literacy. You may well say to me -
'But I do see, and vision is very important to me. I would hate to be blind'.
But what do you see and to what level?
Yes, we need to see the car that is hurtling towards us, or the smile on our loved ones face (I am making an assumption with this last example). We see a series of abstractions and generalisations that we can produce a 'best fit' with a pre-existing abstract pattern.
'Watch out, you almost got run over!'
'Hi honey, I'm home!'
But we do not really see.
What was the quality of light that reflected off the red bonnet of the car? Just how many reds were there? What was totally unique about what I saw?
When I was at art college (supposedly a highly developed visual being), a had an argument with a fellow student over the merits of the artist Rothko.
I thought he was rubbish and made a distinctly (visually) ill-informed and arrogant claim to that end.
I was challenged to a test - to go and sit in-front of the painting for 1 hour - and say nothing (I would now add to this 'and not think in verbal or other abstract forms'), then see if I still held the same opinion.
Needless to say, I lost the bet and evolved.
Remarkably, it was the first time in my life that I had actually seen anything.
Here are two related questions:
If we are visually illiterate, what are the implications of all of this?
If we were visually literate and experiences the world through none abstract patterns, how would the world (and our world) be different?
I am not going to give any 'answers' here, as there may not be any - if we can unhook ourselves from abstract logic, we may not need any answers anyway. All I, or anyone could offer is an opinion based on the internal models we have been (largely) given.
There is a real danger that if we all are so abstract, we will see the two questions above as a code - i.e. When we understand the abstract meaning of the arrangement of words, we can 'move on'. We may not feel the need to actually think - someone will be along shortly with the answer (as is often the case in a society that sees thinking as a subversive activity).
Actually, thinking about these questions will give you far more real information than I (or anyone else) could.
When you have given this some thought, you can actually write the conclusion to this essay, and it will have more meaning than if I had written it.
However, I would like to finish off with a couple of interesting exercises.
1. Take a simple object and look at it for as long as you are prepared to. Do not think! Just look.
Let us assume that you are looking at an apple. Dammit, there, I have just gone and labled it into an abstract (and pre-existing) category. Well, look at it without seeing something you can call 'an apple' - just let your eyes rest on what you are looking at - let all preconceptions melt away.
Look for at least 20mins.
Tell me, what colour is it?
Rest your mind and eyes - do not analyse - do daydream(another and highly subversive social activity). What happens?
2. Now, put the object down amongst other objects (oh and put them on a larger object). Try and see them holistically. By that I mean, do not see them as individual objects, but a collection of interlocking shapes, colours, tones etc. Look at the shapes and spaces between the objects, see them as being just as important. Look for at least 20mins. What happens?
Get a pencil and draw it. What happens?
3. Look at a group of 'things' in the context of a bigger 'thing'. As if you come from another planet. You have never seen any of this before. Don't try to 'work it out'. Just look at it.
Look for at least 20mins. What happens?
Get a pencil and draw it. What happens?
4. Look at the same 'things' - This is a nice one to do when you are outside on a nice summer day (but anything will work). Remind yourself that you cannot actually see any of the objects. You can only see them because light is reflecting off them. This is obviously the case, for if there was a sudden and complete blackout, you would not see anything. This would not be because someone just took all the stuff away. It is because the light got look away. Remind yourself that the 'apple' only looks red because a certain spectrum of colour is reflecting off the surface, whereas other parts of the spectrum are absorbed. It is not red, things really aren't as simple as that.
Notice how the light is not in discrete 'chunks' which fall of discrete objects. Rather, look at how it is the same light that unifies what you see.
Do this exercise for as long as it takes for you to stop seeing individual objects. Do this exercise until you can clearly 'not see' the objects, but 'can see' the light on the surface of the objects.
Repeat this exercise as many times as needed until this is the only way you see.
Now, go to an Art Gallery - no, not the one where people gawp gormlessly at a cow in a tank - go look at, let's say, an Impressionist painting. Can you understand it more deeply?
Now go and paint.
5. Get a photograph (can be of anything, but nothing too simple).
(a) Describe the image to one person using these rules: you can only name 'things' abstractly. You are not allowed to describe what you actually see. Gettit? The best way to achieve this is for you to look at the image - remember what you see - put it away and describe simply the things that you can remember. Now get the subject of your experiment to draw/paint what you have described.
(b) Describe the same image to a second person using an opposite set of rules. By this I mean you cannot name or label anything - you cannot say it is 'an apple'. You have to describe the act of seeing. What you perceive. If you had landed from another planet, how would you describe it? You can talk in general impressions, about how what you see affects you, as well as the shapes and colours and light and how all of this stuff interrelates. By the way, you will not find this easy - but that is exactly why you need to do it! Think of the repercussions of the alternative fergodsake!
Now, get your subject to draw/paint as you describe.
What happens?
Which is the more valid painting? Which painting expresses best your experience of perception?
6. Now do the same exercise - only this time describe to yourself and you paint. There, you are now an artist!
7. Look at an object, until you no longer see it. Now, what are you left with?
Now I will finish with one more experiment. It is not as powerful as the others, but the dissadvantage of the other exercises is that you will not do them! This is a great pity, but I know, yeah, you have so much to do. And these things that you have to do, they are so important.
So here we go.
8. Look at an object long enough to see it - now close your eyes and attempt to see the object as clearly as you can. Is it possible to see it as clearly with your eyes closed as it is with your eyes open?
