THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING WE CAN EXPERIENCE IS
THE MYSTERIOUS. IT IS THE SOURCE OF ALL TRUE ART
AND ALL SCIENCE. HE TO WHOM THIS EMOTION IS A
STRANGER, WHO CAN NO LONGER PAUSE TO WONDER
AND STAND RAPT IN AWE, IS AS GOOD AS DEAD: HIS EYES ARE CLOSED.

Extended Manifesto

I’m afloat in the ocean, trying not to sink. I’m a crack in the asphalt you walk by on the street. I’m a falling star you’ll never see. The lash in your eye, the ‘I’ in team. So who am I? I’m the lesson you’ll never learn. The sickness that was never your concern. I’m the big surprise at the end of the night. The bridge in the gap, the corner of your mind. So who am I?

Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief, in that the belief must be considered to correspond to reality and must be derived from valid evidence and arguments. Beliefs can be acquired through perception, contemplation or communication. Faith however depends on everything existing in relativity and subjectivity and in a state of equilibrium with its surrounding environment.

“Most philosophers hold the view that belief formation is to some extent spontaneous and involuntary. Some people think that one can choose to investigate and research a matter but that one can not choose to believe. On the other hand, most people have the impression that in some cases people don't believe things because they don't want to believe, especially about a matter in which they are emotionally involved.” (Extract from Wikipedia ‘Is Belief Voluntary?’)

The following points I have derived from WONDERLAND – A MANIFESTO FOR 21ST CENTURY IMMERSIVE WORKS by MELINDA RACKHAM. I feel they are extremely relevant to what I am personally trying to achieve.

1. SIMPLE, STRONG, SUBTLE.
2. SEDUCTION OVERCOMES CONTROL.
3. PLAY IS PLEASURE.
4. CONTEMPLATE DON’T MANIPULATE.
5. ABSTRACTION AMPLIFIES MINIMALISM.
6. FEEL NOW, THINK LATER.
7. NOTHINGNESS ENHANCES EMPTINESS.

In Phase 1 I spoke of passing through the darkness of a haunted house and how its lack of visual stimulus intensifies other senses. Now, rather than using lack of sight I intend to create confusion of the visual, aided by non-complimentary sounds/music, in an attempt to create a feeling of uneasiness. Sound instills either the creation or amplification of movement and touch and the fear of being touched. It’s also common to believe that you can see things within this space that do not exist. It is the combinations of senses that suggest the most logical scenario and have you assume that you see someone pass behind you or run before you. Hopefully the lack of conformity to senses generally known to co-exist will evoke stress possibly also through a tactile sense instead of purely visual stimulus.

To achieve this I believe I will need to produce an installation, possibly a screen-based installation that looks at the idea of panic. An environment rather that a static image. I don’t want to simply create intuitive recognition of aesthetic quality but a paradigm, the inability to recognize truth and the want to fabricate an explanation. This ‘panic’ or ‘confusion’ may be about a many number of issues. The work may reflect the contemporary state of anxiety that occurs as new technologies, the inability to distinguish true from false, apprehension towards unfamiliarity or the unease due to …

Through this ‘confusion’ I have played with the idea of attempting to imbue various emotions such as the enhanced capacity to love the lost and vulnerable. These emotions may further increase confusion as the viewer will be unaware as to why they are feeling such towards an unfamiliar figure. Obviously the emotions instilled will vary according to the images I chose to depict. These figures will most probably be once familiar images now plagued by distortion, hyperbole, exaggeration.

To create the intended illusion I may possibly use a story or paragraph similar to the one I have written below that hints the appearance or existence of something but leaves it completely up to interpretation. This paragraph can help with the recognition of what the images depict however it can also be helpful in deterring ease of mind.

Her eyes now cast up, scouring the view above. The figure ahead housed her hopes and desires. Layer upon level, as her eyes pursued further she began to find it hard to distinguish the difference between each detail, every stage. The expanse of material before her both intimidated and enticed as she stepped forward to be enveloped within the shadow cast.

The other possibility along the same lines would be to use optical illusions again aided by music (non complementary) to confuse the viewer. This in turn would once again create unease however rather than evoking empathy it would hopefully instill apprehension through an anxiety of a different form. This may be fascination, claustrophobia etc.

I intend to look further into the works of Anne-Sarah Le Meur, Patricia Piccinini, Damien Hirst etc. Also optical illusions, empathy and possibly claustrophobia.

"Synaesthesia is a re-mapping of sensory data. Signals coming
though one sense organ get re-routed in the brain and are received
as if coming through a different sense organ. Inside the brain all
sensory data are essentially the same—neural, electrical impulses.
The materials of the sense data are the same, but depending on the
sense organ that receives the original signal, the data are processed
differently."

"Sometimes these signals get crossed. Sound, for example might
enter the ear, but once in the brain the sensory data travels down
the visual pathways and color is seen. [Livingstone 2002] With
other routings one might taste a whisper or smell a tickle. If neural
data takes a detour then experience, while synchronized with the
external source event, is mapped and perceived atypically (but not
necessarily uninterestingly). Some people are born with these detours
built into their neural roadways. Most of us do not experience
this at all. Some of us try to simulate it. We make art."

Sound seems to be well known for deriving colour or visual stimulus. Heat from the fire may also evoke colours or sounds. The presence of fire for a synaesthesia, I assume, would be an extremely overwhelming experience. There are so many aspects to focus on without having the ability to intertwine senses..

“The hall carpet glowed orange from under the living-room door…The fire burnt furiously, piled high with logs. Danny had dragged the log basket on to the hearth rug and was kneeling beside it, a log in each hand, watching the fire burn…”

Fire is perceived to be red in colour. On international signage, red indicated the prohibitation of movement, the possibility of danger and a warning to use extreme caution. Universally similar opinions and emotions are evoked by the colour red. American’s believe that red is considered a loud colour, promises excitement; it is a powerful symbol of vibrancy and life, but also of danger and death. In the Kabalah, red refers to love, sacrifice and sin. Scarlet is fire. In china, along with being the colour symbol for fire, red means summer, the south, good luck, joy, good fortune and fertility and in most Indian mythology red is the colour of the sun.

This may be true for the majority of the population without synaesthesia however for the other portion it is possible that “…red may cause a sensation analogous to that caused by a flame, because red is colour of flame. A warm red will prove exciting, another shade of red will cause pain or disgust through association with running blood. In these cases colour awakens a corresponding physical sensation, which undoubtedly works upon the soul.”

johntunger.typepad.com/.../firepit_02b.JPG

Painting 1977, oil on canvas, by Peter Booth

“Dark red skies, the colour of congealed blood, haunt the evenings, and caustic smoke sears each lungful of air. The sound of roaring flames is as persistent as life itself as the earth is torn open and the shadowy, almost deformed, figures of miners labour through the darkness, their eyes glowing red-rimmed from coal-blackened faces."

“Peter Booth grew up amongst the industrial wasteland of Sheffield in England. He is a visionary artist obsessed with superstition, transformation and light."

On Fire: Photographs by Larry Schwarm

“Fire has a connection to our collective unconscious. It is good and evil, soothing and terrifying, protective and threatening, a force for destruction and rebirth. Elijah was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire; Saint Anthony is sometimes depicted with his feet in flames from stamping out the devil. Fire heats our houses but can destroy our homes. And grass, too, in its many forms is fundamental to our being on this planet. Fire and grass, how could I not be drawn to them?”

“The photographer engages our attention first by heightening our amazement at the sensuality of fire. Most of us have enjoyed looking into a fireplace, but few of us have observed as well as he has the astonishing shapes and colors and fluidity of fire. He is so skilled in recording its appearance that occasionally we almost hear the burning and feel the warmth.”

MORE MATTER, LESS ART?
“Okay, so explain art,” Dr. Ramachandran challenged himself. “The question is, are there artistic universals, just like there are linguistic universals? There is a great diversity of styles in art, but could it be that despite this staggering diversity, there are some common principles, some universal laws? And then, of course, there’s the corollary: how does the brain respond to art?
“I became interested in this when I looked at Indian art,” Dr. Ramachandran said. “Until about five years ago, I had no interest in art at all, but then I started looking at sculptures in Indian temples when I was there on sabbatical. I would see the sculptures of the goddess Parvathi from the 10th century, and this was supposed to be the epitome of everything feminine—of sexuality, sensuality, grace, dignity, and poise—yet the English Victorians took a look at this and they said, ‘It’s hideous! It does not look like a real woman.’ Of course, they were making this criticism because they were unconsciously comparing Indian art with ideals of Western representational art, especially Renaissance and Classical Greek art, and you all know that art is not about representation, it’s not about realism. On the contrary, art is about exaggeration, hyperbole, and deliberate distortion of the image to produce pleasing effects in the mind.
“Now, the great irony is, you come to the 20th century and look at Picasso’s example of a woman. She’s got two eyes on one side of her face, like a flounder, a cleft palate, a club foot, and everything else, and the Western art critics say, ‘My God, what a work of genius,’ because he has liberated us from Realism and made us realize that art is not about realism, it’s about distortion, hyperbole, exaggeration.”
Obviously you can’t randomly distort the image and call it art, Dr. Ramachandran observed. “There are specific types of distortion. I came across a word for this, ‘Rasa,’ in ancient Sanskrit art manuals which means ‘capturing the very spirit of something, the soul of something in order to evoke a specific mood or sentiment or emotion in the viewer’s mind.’ So the idea of art is to change the image in some way to more optimally titillate these 30 visual areas of the brain and excite visual emotions.”
Dr. Ramachandran proceeded to present the example of a seagull chick, which begs for food by pecking at a red spot on its mother’s beak. “Niko Tinbergen found you can wave a disembodied beak or even an oblong piece of cardboard with a red dot and the chick gets fooled and pecks at the dummy. Even more amazing, he found that if you show the chick a long thin stick with three red stripes near the end, the chick goes berserk. It pecks much more vigorously at this and prefers it to the real beak,” he said.
This “super beak” more powerfully excites the “beak detecting” neurons in the chick’s visual pathway “even though this abstract stimulus doesn’t even remotely resemble a real beak,” Dr. Ramachandran elaborated. “If the gulls had an art gallery, they would hang this long stick with three stripes on the wall, worship it, call it a Picasso, and pay millions of dollars for it, even though it doesn’t look like anything they know.” The human artist, Dr. Ramachandran continued, has “stumbled on forms that more powerfully activate visual and limbic centers in your brain than any realistic images. He has created the equivalent of the stick with the three stripes for the human brain.”
Dr. Ramachandran emphasized that these theories and observations are “no more than hesitant first steps toward a science of art—toward discovering artistic universals—the new science of ‘neuroaesthetics.’” To conclude, he returned to the questions about the human mind and consciousness he started with. “What is consciousness? What do you mean by falling in love? What is free will? What is ‘the self’? What is humor, music, art? How did language and abstract thinking and metaphor and poetry evolve in humans? When I was a medical student, these were things you pondered only if you didn’t want to get tenure. Now, given our wonderful imaging technology, if we ask the right questions, do the right experiments on the right patients, we can begin to answer these lofty questions about the mind which until now have remained in the domain of philosophers.”
NR—C. Justin Romano

Extract from neurologyreviews.com

The Breathing Room

Stills of 'The Breathing Room', installation by Patricia Piccinini

Synaesthesia – Mapping of Sensory Experiences.

Industrial Design Upper Pool Studio. Semester 2 2006.


Synaesthesia – Mapping of Sensory Experiences.
"Art does not render the visible, rather, it makes visible." - Paul Klee


Darkness, resonant darkness. Inability to see those who pass before or behind you. There’s a terrible smell that is unlike anything I’ve smelt before, where is it coming from? Did someone just touch my arm, blow in my ear or pass by in front of me? How do I get out of here?

Synesthesia is an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. In addition to being involuntary, this additional perception is regarded by the synaesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. Passing through the darkness of a haunted house, its lack of visual stimulus intensifies other senses. Sound instills either the creation or amplification of movement and touch and the fear of being touched. It’s also common to believe that you can see things within this space that do not exist. It is the combinations of senses that suggest the most logical scenario and have you assume that you see someone pass behind you or run before you.

Upon entering there are of course the initial prejudices and expectations that coincide with any theme ride or attraction however the darkness, I believe, takes over and imbues a sense of insecurity. This insecurity leads to the want to turn back or grasp the person next to us. To feel something familiar or if you like, something we are able to ‘put a face to’.

Unable to grasp onto a single thing that may have been familiar to me on this instance, I was incredibly aware of the narrow hallways within this complex and unsure as to what was ahead. Sounds and at times smells created great apprehension.

‘Breathing Room’ by Patricia Piccinini is an interactive piece of work that encompasses moving images, vibration through panels in the floor and sound. It is a screen-based installation that looks at the idea of panic within contemporary society. The images used are of alien yet somewhat familiar objects. Three large screens show a fragment of a body, a stretch of breathing skin. It is recognizable yet not quite real. We see, hear and feel the rhythm of its breathing. It is huge but almost intimate, both enthralling and claustrophobic. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the Breathing Room panics and we share that viscerally, through vibrations in the floor. The belief that they are breathing is simply up to the interpretation and recognition of the viewer as no where does it state this is so. Once again the trickery of the visual via other senses is apparent.

Behind the viewer are a number of small TV monitors, and heard before seen is the strange transgenetic animal that scurries from one to next. At first it might be frightening, like the sound of rats in the walls, but gradually it will start to seem almost ordinary. However, the animal never slows down long enough to have a good look at it. “Like the truth in contemporary culture it feels unreal, is strange to look at and moves quickly from one space to the next…. Like the little animal in the breathing room, we live within a space both expanded and contained.... It moves in and out of the light so quickly that it is hard to get a grasp on. Or else we see it as a fragment in so much detail that we cannot see how it fits into the whole. It is no wonder that we feel anxious, stressed, even a little panicked sometimes.”