Art & Perception

This post began life as a musing on Robert Irwin’s not permitting reproductions of his (abstract) paintings, detailed in a statement in the catalog of his recent show in San Diego. The catalog, of course, is loaded with photographs, including ones of his early paintings, though many could be considered installation views rather than “reproductions.” (As far as I can tell, Irwin has less objection to photographs of his more recent work, despite its contextual and perceptual nature, seemingly much less representable via photography.)

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It appears I’ll be making good on my recent threat to re-activate my dormant Sourdough Trail project. But never fear, I do not intend to flood A&P with posts on that topic. In fact, because, through A&P, I’ve realized how blogs can be useful, I’ve decided to create a new one specifically focused on my project. I’m in no way attempting to create a popular or active site; I simply think the blog structure is appropriate to the nature of what I’m doing, namely a variation on the psychogeography project discussed here a few months ago (and which I still hope to carry out this year). This one has similar concerns, but will be in a familiar rather than a new setting, and will be over a longer time scale, months rather than days. In essence, I want to observe how my sense of that particular place evolves and how it relates to the photography I do there. But if you want to know more, visit Along Sourdough Trail.

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Leaves are beginning to come out here now, but branches were quite bare a week ago when I payed a visit to the strip of woods along Sourdough Trail. I’ve gone there occasionally through the winter, but much less frequently than I used to while actively engaged in that project (I never closed the books on it, but I’ve done very little in the last year). I’m thinking seriously of re-activating it. In any case, the new season seemed to call for a little experimentation.

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When I started my Patina project on weathered auto paint and rock surfaces, I originally had in mind flat surfaces with intriguing designs and colors. But rocks aren’t smooth, so I soon began photographing rocks with some three-dimensionality, playing with the ambiguity between tone and color as surface properties or caused by orientation to the light.

Last week, just back from photographing a favorite rock face, a number of ideas relating to that work seemed to be coming together. Unfortunately, working with the images (just a little) since then, the ideas have muddled themselves rather than resolving. Despite some enticing ingredients, the fine soup is still mostly in my imagination. Here’s what’s stirring in the pot:

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Often our lives are made more difficult by greater choice. In photography, the choice of color vs. monochrome was not necessarily easier in the past, but at least it had to be made by the time film was in the camera. With digital capture, you can change your mind at any time. Some photographers, as far as I can tell, use only color; a far smaller number are all about black and white. Some, like myself, dither. Not to complain, but this is a constant issue in ways it wouldn’t have been before. Reminded of it by both the previous post and recent experience, I here present the latest dithers. Prepare yourself: I’ll be asking for opinions…

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I’ve often been asked whether there is any relation between my interest in art and my work in artificial intelligence (AI). At a practical level, where my work is aimed at making computers more “intelligent,” I’d say the connection is tenuous at best. But at a more philosophical level, AI is essentially cognitive science, which like art is intimately concerned with human perception. Questions about how visual perception works, from retinal stimulation to conceptual understanding and emotional response, are not only central to cognitive science, but probably its best-studied example. I think learning about the psychology of perception can be of value to artists, though certainly many care for it not at all, even if, through training or intuition, they are using its teachings anyway. I think a more explicit knowledge becomes especially useful in applied areas, such as how to design a pleasing and useful object of some sort, or how to alter a graphic or put words with it to achieve some desired effect.

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It’s approaching two years since I first created a web site, and I’ve decided it’s time for a makeover. With my original site, adding a new image required also creating a thumbnail version and editing a file. I was running out of space in the navigation area to list more projects. And on a new monitor I was distressed to see how garish the banner color became. So I’m re-building. I want the new design to be: 1) simple and flexible for me; 2) simple and easy to use for the viewer; and 3) responsive to browser settings such as window and text size.

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