Worms

Todays track - The Blast

Anyway on with business. I got a bit sidetracked this week, and started thinking around AIWS and into Visual Perception, and this led to how we perceive reality, which took me to Plato's Allegory of the Cave and then into how we perceive movement etc etc... Basically a big can of worms has been opened and I need to make sure I don't confuse myself with too much info. I also need to make sure I stay away from the obvious side of visual perception, i.e. optical illusions as they've all been done before and it would result in my work being quite shallow. Nevertheless, they are worth researching.


Above is my square version of the Kanizsa Triangle which is a prime example of 'unconscious inference'. This optical illusion relies on the brain making assumptions based on previous experiences, i.e. a white square is clearly visible in the picture even though there isn't one drawn.
Really interesting stuff, but a bit mind boggling so I'll let Wiki explain;

Hermann von Helmholtz is often credited with the first study of visual perception in modern times. Helmholtz examined the human eye and concluded that it was, optically, rather poor. The poor quality information gathered via the eye seemed to him to make vision impossible. He therefore concluded that vision could only be the result of some form of unconscious inferences: a matter of making assumptions and conclusions from incomplete data, based on previous experiences.

Inference requires prior experience of the world: examples of well-known assumptions, based on visual experience, are:

• light comes from above
• objects are normally not viewed from below
• faces are seen (and recognized) upright.

Anyway I think I need to just focus on AIWS, and then if any of this other visual perception research comes into the work later on then great but for now I need to just focus on one aspect and work from there.

Thinks

In order to get my personality into my work for this project I started by thinking about what and who I am, and what I like. I then flipped my thinking, and wondered what it might be like if I wasn't able to do any of these things? For example I love being in the outdoors, but if I had a condition called Agoraphobia I would be afraid of leaving the house... This led to me thinking about strange disorders and I came across this list.

I then went through the list, thinking about which disorders had the most and best opportunities to explore them visually. While quite a few of them were interesting, weird and funny there was one that instantly stood out -Alice In Wonderland Syndrome, or AIWS. From Wiki;
"Alice in Wonderland syndrome is a disorienting neurological condition which affects human perception. The most prominent and often most disturbing symptom is that of altered body image: the sufferer will find that they are confused as to the size and shape of parts of (or all of) their body." Sufferers may also see "objects with the wrong size or shape and/or finds that perspective is incorrect. This can mean that people, cars, buildings, etc. look smaller or larger than they should be, or that distances look incorrect; for example a corridor may appear to be very long, or the ground may appear too close."
This all sounds very weird, and very visual. This is perfect for me as in order to not make the mistakes I made during NP, I need to start creating imagery right from the get-go and by choosing a really visual topic I'm giving myself the best possible start...

With every blog post I'm going to try and put up a link to the tunes that I'm feeling that day, so for today we're going to Phillies finest - No Great Pretender

NP Assessment

We got some feedback on Negotiated Practice this week, and talked about our ideas for EMP - basically I need to put more of myself into my work to give it some life, and to help me get enthusiastic about what I'm doing I need to just relax and enjoy it. It was mentioned that my work for Negotiated Practice wasn't as successful as it could've been because I was thinking too far ahead, concentrating on what I'm doing when this course finishes instead of what I'm doing now, and I think this is a fair comment. I also need to think very carefully about presenting my work, and the materials that I use in my finished product, whatever that may be...
So food for thought, and some good feedback that made sense to me and that I can build on to improve my work, and my marks for this project.