Mailing 2: Perception - Wilson HurstCamera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and...
Transcript of Mailing 2: Perception - Wilson HurstCamera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and...
Mailing 2: Perception
wilson hurst
Levels of Understanding
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” - Werner Heisenberg
“Intuition is perception via the unconscious.” - Carl Gustav Jung
Some venues have specific positions from which I like to make intermittent observations. Such
a recurring activity involves receiving knowledge of the external through the senses and
recording the associated digital data. For at its core, photography is a technologically driven art
form, used to augment perception. However, both science and sensation are limited and are
subject to perceptional inaccuracy.
Perception is the process of attaining awareness and understanding of sensory information.
There is no rigid meaning to anything. What is perceived is the interpretation of sensations
informed by their relationships to past experience. Thus, cultural conditioning considerably
influences perception. Humans are incapable of processing unfamiliar information without
injecting the inherent bias of prior knowledge. In addition, as any sensation can give rise to
multiple percepts, it is also possible that a specific sensation can fail to elicit any percept.
Manifestations of attention are experienced as different observable phenomenon that
consciously coalesces into a coherent whole. Overt and covert modalities are here in play.
Explicit attention is directing sensory apparatus, like the eyes, towards a stimulus resource.
Filtered attention is psychological concentration on a subset of available sensory stimuli.
Cognitive neural processing can augment a signal from a selective constituent of the sensory
panorama.
Working on dreams by visiting other dimensions, are we ever fully awake? We inhabit an
emotional world where facts are actually effects of the mind adding to the experiential
foundation. Although the content and purpose of dreams remain mysterious, they can be
described as a response to neural processes during sleep. When we are conscious, similar
neural processes are manifest and are defined as perception. Perception is the recognition and
interpretation of sensory stimuli based primarily on memory. So the sleeping dream state that
functions without sensory stimulation can be considered as a kind of “suspension of
perception.”
Because “conditions of art are socially and historically constituted”, they are changeable
realities. In fact, this is one of the most valued characteristics of the collective arts: unexpected
changes or shifts encountered in life can be enabled by experiencing art. Art expands the realm
of possibility in a multiplicity of directions. It is nice to get a good seat from which to observe
the entertainment, up-close to all the action. Of course, at a deeper level of actuality,
everything in the universe is infinitely unified. Therefore, by activating our affective
consciousness, we can recognize the value of any positional viewpoint. Everything
interpenetrates everything, and although human nature is indexical, ultimately all of existence
integrates in a seamless web.
___________________________________________________________________________
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Print.
Descriptive Annotation
Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes last book, is his personal exploration of photographic meaning.
Here he engaged in an individual quest to define for himself what distinguished the “essential
feature of photography from other images.” (CL 03) The text deals with the structure of the
photograph as a visual system, and explores elements within categorical hierarchies and the
relationships between them. But a classification of photographs is elusive because empirical,
rhetorical, and aesthetic categories can be applied to other image forms and thus are not
unique to photography.1
1 Empirical (professional/amateur), Rhetorical (landscape/object./portrait/nude), Aesthetic (realism/pictorialism)
However, what is uniquely different about a photograph is how it represents and
simultaneously is never separate from its subject. “The photograph always carries its referent
with itself.” (CL 05) The photographic object itself is therefore invisible; it is not what we see,
we see the referent. In his thinking, photography can be the object of three perspectives: (CL
09)
To do – the photographer, operator To undergo – person or thing photographed, the target, referent, Spectrum (“every
photograph is a return of the dead”) To look – the spectator, all who view the photograph
Bathes recognizes he cannot address the first feature. He is too impatient to be a photographer
and finds Polaroid photography somehow disappointing. But then he proceeds to address the
first feature anyway, and claims the intention of the operator is to “surprise.”
Relative to the second feature, a person knowing he is being photographed will adjust his
appearance for the camera, attempting to project his essence of individuality. (CL 11)
Most of the book is concerned with the portrait photograph described as a closed force field
when considered from divergent viewpoints: The photographic portrait represents the:
One I think I am One I want others to think I am One the photographer thinks I am One the photographer renders. (CL 13)
Throughout the book Barthes is fixated on death – the photograph is about death. At the
moment of camera exposure, the subject becomes an object (a micro-version of death). The
photographer poses and positions the subject in a scene, as this death is an embalming. (Cl 14)
Photography is closer to theater than to painting – because of its relationship to death. (Cl 31)
Essence of photography is its relation to love and death – and is individual to the specific
spectator. Once his mother died he no longer had any reason to live. (CL 72)
Some images will resonate while others are boring. (CL 17) Functioning as spectator, Barthes is
interested in photography only for “sentimental” reasons. But what makes a photograph
interesting, an attraction? It is an advenience or adventure that makes photography exist – the
photograph then “animates.” (CL 20)
Photographs can contain two discontinuous heterogeneous elements, studium and punctum,
and such a co-presence might establish an interest in a particular photograph. (CL 26-27)
Studium
An average effect, based on a shared interest, a common response of most observers grounded
in cultural conditioning. This is responding to the photograph on the level of personal likes and
dislikes. It is here that the viewer encounters the function of the photograph and the
photographer’s intentions: to inform, to represent, to surprise, to cause to signify, to provoke
desire. The photograph may surprise the spectator when intentions are ambiguous. “Culture is
a contract arrived at between creators and consumers.” (CL 28)
Punctum
The punctum is formed by incidental details which elicit emotional association unrelated to
photographic meaning resolved culturally. It is “An element which will break or punctuate the
studium, that accident which pricks me, a detail a partial object, power of expansion, often
metonymic.” 2
The stadium is ultimately always coded, the punctum is not. (CL 51) In order to see a
photograph well, to receive the punctum, it is best to look away or close your eyes. – “… allow
the detail to rise of its own accord into affective consciousness.”
(CL 45) As such, punctum is unplanned and only exists for one specific viewer.
Through the punctum “the photograph transcends itself; is this not the sole proof of its art? To
annihilate itself as medium, to be no longer a sign but the thing itself?” Intentional details
positioned by the photographer are not punctum, it is only experienced by the viewer. (CL 47)
3
2 Metonymic is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept.
Punctum is what the
spectator “adds to the photograph and what is nonetheless already there.” (CL 55) Something is
always represented “…the photograph is pure contingency and can be nothing else.” Another
3 Affective consciousness relates to moods and attitudes characterized by emotion, and the tendency to assign valuation and react to feelings. This is a key component of an organism's stimuli interaction process.
punctum element is time, recognition of the photograph as referring to that which has been.
(CL 96)
History is the time before ones birth, representing prior non-existence. Discovering this in
photography by moving back through time, Barthes most responded to a single photograph,
Winter Garden, which for him provoked not just an identity but the essence of his mother. (CL
71)
The photograph is reality in a past state, where “The power of authentication exceeds the
power of representation.” (CL 89) The photographic referent is necessarily a real thing which
has been placed before the lens, without which there would be no photograph. (CL 76) “In
photography the presence of a thing is never metaphoric” (CL 78), thus “the essence of a
photograph is a past reality “that-has-been.” (CL 76)
Photographic meaning is a product of society and its history. (CL 34) Society mistrusts pure
meaning, but advertising photography has clear meaning. No meaning at all is safe, so
photography is subversive when it is pensive, when it thinks. (CL 38)
“Usually the amateur is defined as an immature state of the artist: someone who cannot - or
will not - achieve the mastery of a profession. But in the field of photographic practice, it is the
amateur, on the contrary, who is the assumption of the professional; for it is he who stands
closer to the noeme of photography.” The noeme of photography is the always historical
photographic experience, supporting the capacity a photograph to reference something ‘that
has been’. (CL 99) A photograph is a temporal hallucination, false on the level of perception but
true on the level of time: “it is not there” - “but it has indeed been.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Benjamin, Walter, and J A. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Penguin great ideas. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.
Descriptive Annotation
Written in 1935, this essay postulates that art is malleable, responding to evolving conditions of
production, distribution, and reception. Although artworks have always been subject to
replication, by 1900 reproduction technology became so efficient that the reiteration process
profoundly modified the meaning and impact of the art so proliferated. An implied value
judgment is rendered, that specifies a negative consequence of this modern transformation. In
mass reproductions, the “here and now” of the original work of art is absent - its “unique
existence in a particular place.” Uniqueness underlies “authenticity,” which evades
reproducibility. As mechanically reproduced art is distributed widely, the experience of
contemplation is lost. This missing element is given the name “Aura.” Aura has its origin in
ritual, cult, and tradition, and perceptual orientation changes over time and has social
influences. Reproducibility revolutionized “the whole social function of art.” Aura’s decay
socially adjusted the behavior of the mass population to both get closer to things, and to
overcome object uniqueness. As cult value declines, exhibition value increases. This generates a
new function for art, with traditional “artistic function” becoming incidental while exhibition
value becomes superior and pregnant with political significance.
Modern art forms exist primarily in replica, so that an original artwork is indistinguishable from
its copies. This renders authenticity arbitrary and illegitimate. Mass distributed artistic
reproductions are incorporated into the personal contexts of their observers, transforming the
entire environment of art. A unique object is too limited to be addressed by a mass, which is
defined by the shared experiences of its members.
The film actor differs from the stage actor. Just as the motion picture process does not record
the performance as a whole, the actor cannot adjust to a specific audience. The audience
empathizes with the constructed and edited film creation rather than the actor: this is not
compatible with cult value. In addition, film has no aura because a film performance isn’t “here
& now.” In this regard, film art has escaped the realm of “beautiful semblance.”4
On a film set the equipment is prevailing. The “illusory nature of film” is twice removed; it
comes from the editing function. “The presentation of reality in film” is significant because it
paradoxically provides “the equipment-free aspect of reality . . . precisely on the basis of the
most intensive interpenetration of reality with equipment.”
4 On the Sublime, Friedrich Schiller
When the masses confront contemporary painting, they have hostile reaction because of their
distance to the medium. Only a few select individuals are positioned as legitimate critics. With
film the mass reaction is progressive. This is because film combines pleasure with “an attitude
of expert appraisal.” With cinema, “the critical and uncritical attitudes of the public coincide.”
Film permits “simultaneous collective reception” and progressive reactions. In a film the
meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones.
Film produces a divergent participation, a kind of “reception in distraction.” Distraction and
concentration are directly opposite. Traditional art requires concentration in which the viewer
is absorbed by the art. With film, ‘the distracted masses absorb the work of art into
themselves.” Reception in distraction is a sign of profound changes in perception. "It
encourages an evaluating attitude" and positions art to mobilize the masses.
traditional art art mechanically reproduced
painting - drawing photography - film
aura aura lost
original derivative
unique common
distance closeness
ritualistic political
contemplation distraction
cult value exhibition value
hostile reaction progressive reaction
art absorbs viewer viewer absorbs art ___________________________________________________________________________
Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999. Print.
Descriptive Annotation
The basic premise of this thought provoking book is the assumption that “the ways in which we
intently listen to, look at, or concentrate on anything have a deeply historical character.” In any
activity, we are “in a dimension of contemporary experience that requires that we effectively
cancel out or exclude from consciousness much of our immediate environment.” 5
The book is not concerned with whether or not there is some empirically identifiable mental or
neurological capacity for attention. Rather the focus is on documenting its presumptive
existence and importance during the historical period under review. (SoP 23)
Crary
debatably contends that this biological necessity is both negative and caused by “western
modernity.” He further claims that our lives are a patchwork of disconnected states that are not
“natural.” At the end of the twentieth century, humankind is adrift in a vast social crisis of
“subjective dis-integration.” He argues, “Modern distraction can only be understood through its
reciprocal relation to the rise of attentive norms and practices.”
Attentive norms reside at a paradoxical intersection. One vector is the attentiveness influenced
and controlled by society as a disciplinary organization of labor, education, and mass
consumption. The other vector is an ideal of sustained attentiveness as a constitutive element
of a creative and free subjectivity.
5 Although I enjoyed the portion book I read (Introduction and Chapter One), and benefited
much from the study, my scientific training indicates this human capacity for sensation filtration
is a fundamental requirement for survival. If we could not control sensations by selective
awareness, we would be completely overwhelmed by the continuous and massive input
stream.
Primarily concerned with the historical conception of attention, the book is an attempt to
outline how the ideas about attention changed over time. From 1870 to the very early 1900s,
significant cultural alteration invoked a modernization of subjectivity.
The first chapter establishes why attention became a decisively new kind of conceptual model
and why it became inseparable from philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic investigations
of perception. In addition, these re-conceptualizations of perception became a central element
in the reshaping of mass culture. Attention emerged as a model of how a subject maintains a
coherent and practical sense of the world, a model that is not primarily optical or even
necessarily coincidental with reality.
Perception can be both absorption and a deferral, a kind of suspension. In such a state,
attention might become so rapt that it transforms ordinary conditions. This position is a
cancellation or an interruption, a disturbance, or a negation of perception itself - a “hovering
out of time.”
Repeatedly reference is made to the “Problem of attention.” In a broad sense, a problem exists
when an individual becomes aware of a significant difference between what actually is and
what is desired. Perhaps more to the spirit of the text, this problem refers to a situation,
condition, or issue that is yet unresolved.
New models of subjective vision emerged in the nineteenth century and broke from a classic
“regime of visuality.” Although the author does not define the classic regime, my research
indicates he refers to vision as a social fact founded on the geometric certainties of optics. The
visual thus represented an external fact rather than an internal interpretation. But the outlined
developments in the history of perception grounded an understanding of vision in the “density
and materiality of the body.” Vision thus became dependent on the physiological observer and
therefore is fundamentally faulty. (SoP 12)
This logically leads to new assumptions, that the senses have no objectivity or certainty. Once
the empirical truth of vision was determined to lie in the body, sensation could be controlled by
external techniques of manipulation and stimulation. The disintegration of an indisputable
distinction between interior and exterior was a condition for the emergence of a “spectacular
modernizing culture.” Coupled with this was a dramatic expansion of aesthetic experience.
Attempts to rationalize the irrational must fail so questions asked are more important than the
empirical conclusions. Some such questions include:
How does attention screen out some sensations and not others? How many simultaneous sensations can be attended for how long? How fast can one switch attention for one sensation to another? Is attention an automatic or voluntary act? (SoP 24-29)
Because attentiveness is the site of observation, classification and measurement, it is also the
locus around which knowledge is accumulated. Artists like Seurat and Cezanne contented that
any sensation is always a compounding of memory, desire, will, anticipation, and immediate
experience. (SoP 27) Crary argues that “attention and distraction cannot be though outside of a
continuum in which the two ceaselessly flow into one another, as part of a social field in which
the same imperatives and forces incite one and the other.” (SoP 51)
Three attention models become germane:
A reflex process, mechanical adaptation to environmental stimuli Various automatic or unconscious processes of forces Decisive voluntary activity of the subject to impose itself on the perceived world
The consciousness is inseparable from physiological temporality and process. Mental states
marginalized in older perception theories (sleep, trance, fainting, daydream, dissociation), are
important as components of newer theories. (SoP 57) The modern subject ceases to be
synonymous with a consciousness. (SoP 58)
Throughout the twentieth century, shifting power structures and changing subjectification
models have demanded reciprocal modifications in understanding attentive behavior. (SoP 72)
Concepts of perception and attention swim in a sprawling diversity of rationalization attempts.
To conclude, what follows are significant selected samples of philosophical thought:
Immanuel Kant The dilemma of modernity is defined by a human capacity for synthesis within the fragmentation of a cognitive field. Perceptual modalities are in a state of perpetual transformation. The modernizing cultural environment is increasing saturated with sensory input.
Arthur Schopenhauer Perception involves a wholeness of the world, a variable relation of forces. Therefore, the question is what processes and structures allow for the complex coherence of conscious thought.
Henri-Louis Bergson Perception involves a synthesis binding immediate sensory perceptions with the creative forces of memory.
G. Stanley Hall The perceptual synthesis progression is a condition of knowledge.
James Cappie Attention is an imprecise way a subject selectively isolates certain components of a sensory field at the expense of others to maintain an orderly and productive world.
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac Attention is based on the force of the focused sensation.
Alfred Fouilee “Concentration of the will and attention on anything will lead to exhaustion of attention and to a paralyses of the will.” In perception a given force can assume more than one form and attention and distraction are inherently inseparable. Modernity is a process of fragmentation and destruction in which premodern forms of wholeness and integrity were irretrievably degraded through technological, urban, and economic reorganizations.
Walter Benjamin Within perception, distraction and concentration form polar opposites. Architecture and film are paradigms of the modern representing a “reception in a state of distraction.”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Attention can be absorption, a forgetting precondition for life-affirming action. This forgetting could attain an instant of eternity within the flux of human time. Orderliness of consciousness is no longer is guaranteed, and “a window opens onto the cognitive chaos of modernity against which attention will be conjured up to do battle.”
Wilhelm Dilthey Subjective experience is “a continuous stream.” In this flow, we manifest only a single relative representation at a time. As it disappears then another relative representation begins to
appear. Thus, the selective and delimited nature of attention relates to the narrowness of consciousness. “Consciousness is an immense terrain that is illuminated only in very small areas by the beam of attention.”
William James Stream of thought is an internal equilibrium of perception always in a state of change, the changes affecting every part. Attention figuratively freezes the stream temporarily. “Each of us literally chooses, by his ways of attending to things, what sort of a universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.” We inhabit a common perceptual world due to overlapping common choices made by an evolving community of free individuals. The emergence of increasing powerful technologies and institutions externally determine the objects of attention for populations.
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz “The natural tendency of attention when left to itself is to wander to ever new things.” ___________________________________________________________________________
Frieling, Rudolf, and Dieter Daniels. Media Art Net 1. Wien: Springer, 2003. Print.
Artwork Analysis
ASCII Art Ensemble Walter van der Cruijsen, Luka Frelih, Vuk Cosic
History of Moving Images http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/film/
Introduction An interest in symbols as images and images as symbols informed my selection of “A History of
Moving Images” as the artwork to analyze from the expansive book and on-line project, Media
Art Net 1. As a survey of media art, this selection was made difficult by virtue of the massive
quantity of interesting works presented, and I plan to spend much more time with this valuable
resource.
Description of the Work Founded in 1998 “The ASCII Art Ensemble” is a European assemblage of three artists interested
in translating moving images into animated ASCII characters. The process is grounded in early
text-only based computer systems, in which images could only be presented by selection and
placement of the available symbol set, character by character. In such arrangements, a stylized
image is encoded based on the tonal density and shape of each character relative to the
information contained in the original image. “A History of Moving Image” is a web project
providing a series of short converted video image clips appropriated from specific iconic
cultural connections, including the original Star Trek television series from the sixties.
Early Historical Context The first written and therefore accumulated communication was in the form of pictures, which
represented ideas and objects. Over time, these hieroglyphics evolved into symbols
representing sounds of spoken communication. But the letterform as purely visual remained
important as an aesthetic archetype. Illuminated manuscripts incorporated decorative
penmanship into textual manuscripts. Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), a
French poet and artist known for juxtaposing the old and the new, used shaped
text in his handwritten visual word poems.6
6 Apollinaire, Guillaume, and Anne H. Greet. Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Print.
Since 1867, people have used the
typewriter not only for making text based documents, but also for creating
works of art. Typewriter art began to flourish from the late 1950s with the
concrete poetry movement. Concrete poetry is an art form where the message is created by
the combination of words and typography.7
ASCII Art
Along comes computers and ASCII, an acronym for the American Standard Code for Information
Interchange. ASCII art developed to a sophisticated level on computer bulletin board systems of
the late 1970s and early 1980s. The limitations
of early personal computers necessitated the
use of text characters to represent images.
This lead to ASCII's widespread adaption by
underground online art groups of the period, a
movement collectively known as ArtScene. 8
During the 1990’s, as graphical browsing and
variable-width fonts became dominant, ASCII
art dramatically declined. Microsoft declared
ASCII art "dead" in June of 1998, the exact
same time as the founding of “The ASCII Art Ensemble.”
Interpretation
“For all my life I have been attracted to unorthodox creation and usage of writing...to explore the spaces beyond text in lines or between two pages in the same leaf or between the letter and the paper that holds it (this) is much more meaningful...”
- Vuk Cosic
There are multitudes of conceptual layers to “A History of Moving Images” that resonate
profoundly. Following are those most significant.
7 Riddell, Alan. Typewriter Art. London: London Magazine Editions, 1975. Print. 8 http://artscene.textfiles.com/
Symbols <---> Images
This work explores the transcoding between one mode of language to another. By interrupting
and deconstructing expected visual codes and conventions, new relationships are created.
Symbols by principle are specific marks that represent something else by association. As a
different paradigm, images represent by resemblance. Here we have both modalities
juxtaposed in synergistic ways building a new complex whole out of the individual parts.
Information transformation
An attractive aspect of this work is its retro-futuristic aesthetic encoding, using an already
historical and obsolete method of a thoroughly modern digital communication protocol.
Associations between meaning and language are explored, providing an appreciation of
characters as significant shapes related to a superimposed image structure, rather than just for
their conventional symbolic role of representation.
Representation and Meaning
The digital image as an artistic representation has become ubiquitous and transparent, but in
the form of Ascii art is explicitly reveled. Communication becomes increasingly complex. Each
individual symbol may contain meaning, certain symbol combinations have more meaning, and
the whole is rendered into a pictorial representation with its own connotation. All these layers
can be manipulated separately, and assemble into recognizable moving constructs, flickering
over time forming a narrative. The code and image are simultaneously apparent.
Time History Culture
From the ancient expressions of hieroglyphics to a dematerialized digital glow on a computer
monitor, pictographic symbols resonate. The history of civilization is the history of written and
thus stored symbolic communication. Star Trek appropriation, being a shared and culturally
influential science fiction allusion is apropos. These Ascii Art messages continue to adjust and
modernized while marching along with evolving technological innovation, thus questioning
fundamental culture assumptions.
Internalization
As the relationships between writing, poetry, symbols, representation of meaning, and image
making are of enormous importance to me, I intend to incorporate Ascii and text art into my
personal creative repertoire. Below is example of an initial trial. Taking these concepts and
build on the possibilities in new and divergent ways, my desire is to aesthetically layer meaning
in an allusion to a historic future, or a future history.
Railway Station
Railway Station Detail